Food Security and the EU`s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP

Transcription

Globalising Hunger
Food Security and the EU’s
Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP)
Author: Thomas Fritz
DRAFT 1
Globalising Hunger:
Food Security and the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
Author: Thomas Fritz
1 This is still a draft version. On October 12 the Commission’s legislative proposals for the new CAP will be presented. The final
version of this study will integrate these proposals in order to be useful into the next year when the EP and the Council have their
discussions on the CAP.
Contents
1 INTRODUCTION 4
2 GOING GLOBAL:
EUROPEAN AGRI-FOOD INDUSTRY 7
3 CAP: WINNERS AND LOSERS IN EUROPE 13
3.1 A never-ending story: CAP reforms 15
3.2 The decoupling fraud 21
3.3 Unequal distribution of funds 24
3.4 The losers: Small farms 30
4 CAP IMPACTS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH 32
4.1 Import dependency and food deficit 32
4.2 Colonising food: EU cereal exports 37
Changing eating habits: Wheat flour in Kenya 40
Cereal price shock in West Africa 43
EPAs: Securing export markets 46
4.3 Opening the flood gates: EU milk exports 48
Swamping African markets 53
Milk powder in Cameroon 56
Free trade and the fight against import surges 60
4.4 Europe plucks Africa: EU poultry exports 65
Risking public health 70
Import restrictions and loopholes 71
4.5 Feeding factory farms: EU soy imports 74
The EU as a land grabber 81
A toxic production model 85
5 RECOMMENDATIONS 88
Globalising Hunger: Food Security and the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
1 Introduction
After several rounds of reforms, the EU’s Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP) is once again facing a comprehensive overhaul.
By 2013, the current CAP comes to end and the debate has
started on its future after 2013. The discussion on the €57
billion spent on the CAP today –amounting to 40 percent of the
EU budget – takes places against the background of a dramatic
worsening of the global food crisis together with rising and
more volatile food prices.2 For 2010, the number of people
with hunger is estimated at 925 million, up from 833 million
in 2000-2002.3 But although the Common Agricultural Policy
strongly influences the state of poverty and food insecurity in
the world, its external dimension is barely taken into account in
the current debate.
The European Union is a leading world power in agricultural
trade: It is the largest exporter of processed food, the second
largest exporter of dairy and pork and the third largest exporter
of poultry and wheat. Many of these products benefit from gen2 FAO et al., ‘Price Volatility in Food and Agricultural Markets: Policy
Responses’, Policy Report, 2 June 2011.
3 FAO, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2010: Adressing food
insecurity in protracted crises, Rome 2010.
4
erous CAP subsidies awarded to European farmers and food
processors. At the same time, the EU’s free trade agreements
(FTAs) force developing countries to open up their markets for
European surplus production which has been stimulated by
generous CAP support. But local farmers and processors in the
Global South who cannot compete with subsidised European
goods face the risk of being displaced by unfair competition.
The EU is also a large importer of farm products, particularly
animal feed like soybeans, thus occupying millions of hectares
of farmland abroad which cannot be used for local food production anymore. Therefore, any changes of the EU’s demand
and supply have strong impacts on agriculture and food security in the world.
In November 2010, the Commission presented a communication outlining options for the future CAP and its contribution
to achieve food security. However, despite some welcome
changes – particularly a fairer distribution of subsidies – it is
still based on productivity and global competitiveness of the
European agri-food industry. According to the Commission, the
EU should contribute to meeting “growing world food demand,
expected by FAO to increase by 70 percent by 2050”.4
4 European Commission, ‘The CAP towards 2020: Meeting the food, natural
resources and territorial challenges of the future’, Communication from the
Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic
The growth in demand could offer “an opportunity for EU food
exporters”, but exploiting it would require “to enhance the
competitiveness and productivity of the EU agricultural sector”.
In the Commission’s vision, agriculture has to serve the needs
of the export-oriented food business: “A strong agricultural
sector is vital for the highly competitive food industry to remain
an important part of EU economy and trade.”5 In this vision,
the main role of agriculture is to supply cheap raw materials to
enable the food industry’s export success.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De
Schutter, criticises the EU’s focus on productivity and trade,
since food availability as such does not guarantee its adequate
distribution: “The question of global food security cannot be
reduced simply to a problem of supply or production.” If food
production would rise in tandem with further marginalisation
of small-scale farmers in the South, “the battle against hunger
and malnutrition will be lost”.6 Yet, further marginalisation of
and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, Brussels, 18.11.2010,
COM(2010) 672 final, p. 2.
small farmers is precisely the risk associated with ongoing
dumping of EU food products on world markets and the growing imports of particularly feedstuffs for the European livestock
industry.
By fostering competitiveness and exports of European agribusiness, the EU ignores the main challenge for food insecure
countries today: the reduction of their import dependency.
Since the 1980s, the majority of developing countries switched
from net exporters to net importers of food. Nowadays, two
thirds of them suffer from food trade deficits and growing expenses for purchases of cereals, dairy products and vegetable
oils on the world market. In order to reduce their vulnerability
against price spikes and recurrent food crises, these countries
urgently need a policy shift that fosters domestic agricultural
production and limits import dependency. Given Europe’s international responsibility in the fight against hunger, the EU should
make every effort to support such a shift. But unfortunately, the
CAP in its present form heads in the opposite direction. It deepens import dependency in the South to secure export markets
for the European food industry.
5 Ibid, p. 4..
6 Olivier De Schutter, ‘The Common Agricultural Policy towards 2020: The
role of the European Union in supporting the realisation of the right to food’,
Comments and Recommendations by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on
the right to food, 17 June 2011, p. 1.
Past reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy largely neglected its contribution to poverty and malnutrition. Although
European policy makers adapted the CAP to changes of the
5
international political landscape, they never seriously tried to
assure its coherence with stated development objectives like
the eradication of poverty and hunger. For the EU to fulfill its
global responsibilities, a far more profound reform of the CAP
would be required.
The present publication aims to contribute to such a reform.
It describes the history of the Common Agricultural Policy, its
several reforms, its main beneficiaries, its impacts on agriculture, poverty and food security in the Global South as well
as the linkages between the CAP and European trade policy.
It analyses the impacts of the scramble for the cheapest raw
materials, the exports of cereals, dairy and poultry products as
well as the effects of the growing demand for feedstuffs, by far
the most important agricultural commodity imported into the
European Union. The final recommendations outline some of
the necessary changes the EU would have to implement so that
the CAP could effectively contribute to the eradication of poverty and hunger and the realisation of global food sovereignty.
6
2 Going global:
European agri-food
industry
The European Union is the leading agricultural player in international trade. Together with the US, the bloc of 27 EU Member
States is the main food and agricultural exporter in the world.
In 2010, its agricultural exports reached the record level of €91
billion, thanks to a spectacular growth of 21 percent compared
to the crisis year 2009. Its global market share accounted for
17 percent, approximately the same as the share of the US. The
EU is also by far the biggest agricultural importer in the world.
Agricultural commodities worth €83 billion entered the EU
market in 2010, far ahead of the US with €65 billion. The EU’s
share of global imports was 19 percent (see charts 1 and 2).
More than 70 percent of EU agricultural imports, worth about
€60 billion, originate in developing countries.7
Soya – beans as well as meal – constitutes the single most
important agricultural commodity imported into the European
7 European Commission, ‘Global and EU agricultural exports rebound’, MAP
– Monitoring Agri-trade Policy, Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural
Development, No. 01-11, May 2011.
Union, mainly supplied by Argentina and Brazil (for soya
meal) and Brazil and the US (for soya beans). In 2010, the EU
imported soybean meal worth €6.4 billion and soybeans valued
at €4.5 billion. Other important items include coffee, bananas,
cocoa beans and palm oil, all of which tropical products
provided almost exclusively by developing countries. On the
other hand, the EU exports mainly processed foods like beverages, essential oils and food preparations as well as important
amounts of wheat, meat and dairy products.8
Hailing the strong export growth of the past six years, the
European Commission reports that the “resulting improvement
in the EU’s trade balance turned it into a net exporter in 2010,
for the first time since 2006, with a €6 billion agricultural trade
surplus”.9 But despite the recent export success, the European
agro-food industry lost part of its share of the global export
market. According to industry figures, the EU’s share of the
global food and drink export market has been shrinking from
24.6 percent in 1998 to 17.5 percent in 2008. It’s main competitor, the US, experienced a similar loss.10 This development is
mainly due to the growing competition of emerging markets
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., p. 12.
10 CIAA, ‘Data & trends of the European Food and Drink Industry 2009’,
Confédération des industries agro-alimentaire de l’UE, Brussels, March 2010.
7
Chart 2 EU27, US, Japan, China & Russia - Agricultural Imports
billion euros
Chart 1 EU27, US & Brazil and China - Agricultural Exports
Sources: COMEXT & GTA
8
like Brasil, China, Argentina, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Brasil, in particular, managed to almost double its food exports
in the last ten years and is today the third largest player in the
global agricultural export market.11
After several studies commissioned by the EU confirmed
the weakening competitiveness of the European agro-food
industry, the European Commission in 2008 established
the ‘High Level Group on the Competitiveness of the AgroFood Industry’ to advise on ways to reverse this trend. This
expert group, which was later transformed into the ‘High
Level Forum for a Better Functioning Food Supply Chain’,
consists mainly of representatives of large food corporations,
agribusiness associations, the European Commission,
the Member States and a few civil society organisations.
Its membership includes transnational corporations like
Danone, Nestlé, Metro and Unilever and associations
such as the European umbrella of farmers organisations
COPA-COGECA12, the highly influential food processors
confederation CIAA13, the liaison committee of food traders
11 WTO, International Trade Statistics 2010, Geneva, pp.51 and 56.
12 ��
COPA-COGECA: Comité des organisations professionnelles agricoles –
Confédération générale de la coopération agricole.
13 ��
CIAA: Confédération des industries agro-alimentaire de l’UE.
CELCAA14 and the umbrella of EU wholesalers and retailers
EuroCommerce.
In 2009, the High Level Group released its report on the
competitiveness of the European agro-food industry outlining
recommendations for the whole food supply chain. These recommendations reflect main orientations of EU agricultural, food
and trade policies. Having found that the “European agro-food
industry is confronted with an overall decrease of its share in
the world market”, the High Level Group offers several explanations for this trend:15
· competition of Brazil, China and other emerging
markets,
· trade barriers on third country markets, such as
tariffs and non-tariff measures,
· burdensome customs procedures,
· insufficient access to cheap raw materials.
14 CELCAA: European Liaison Committee for the Agricultural and Agri-Food
Trade.
15 High Level Group on the Competitiveness of the Agro-Food Industry,
‘Report on the Competitiveness of the European Agro-Food Industry’, European
Commission, Enterprise and Industry Directorate General, 17 March 2009,
HLG.007, p. 11.
9
The report highlights access to cheap raw materials as a
“key issue for the European agro-food industry”, since these
represent a significant part of the production costs.16 Rising
and increasingly volatile commodity prices and burdensome EU
food safety regulations on genetically modified crops for food
and feed would pose a threat for the supply with agricultural
commodities. The report claims that the EU food processing
industry would find itself in a competitive disadvantage because
many of its competitors pay lower prices for these commodities
than European companies. The High Level Group, therefore,
calls for an EU policy framework that a) “facilitates the sufficient supply of competitively priced raw materials” and b)
simplifies authorisation procedures for animal feedstuffs and
genetically modified organisms (GMOs)17.
One of the main problems for the European agro-food industry is the maturity of the EU market and the decreasing
growth of food demand due to low birth rates in EU member
states. In the past, population growth in benchmark countries
like the US, Australia, Brazil or Canada was three to four
times higher than in the European Union, indicating lower
10
future food demand in the EU.18 The High Level Group concludes that “the development of the European Agro-food companies becomes more and more dependent on the external
dimension and access to foreign markets both for exporting
and importing goods”.19
Having conceived global expansion as almost indispensable,
the report strongly advocates for further trade liberalisation and
improved market access “by removing all unjustified obstacles
to trade.”20 Whilst the multilateral approach of reaching a comprehensive trade deal in the Doha Round of the World Trade
Organisation WTO should continue to be pursued, the report
views bilateral trade agreements as significant complements.
It urges the conclusion of on-going bilateral trade negotiations
between the EU and, inter alia, India, Ukraine, Andean, ASEAN
and Central American countries as well as further talks with
China, Russia, Mercosur and Mediterranean countries.
18 European Commission, Competitiveness of the European Food Industry –
An economic and legal assessment, Enterprise and Industry, 2007, pp. 26-27.
16 ��
Ibid., p. 12.
19 High Level Group on the Competitiveness of the Agro-Food Industry,
‘Report on the Competitiveness of the European Agro-Food Industry’, European
Commission, Enterprise and Industry Directorate General, 17 March 2009,
HLG.007, p. 65.
17 ��
Ibid., p. 23.
20 Ibid.
All parts of the EU food chain undergo processes of structural
adjustment, consolidation and concentration. The bargaining
power is particularly high in the intermediate and downstream
segments of the food chain where processors and retailers
define product requirements for agricultural primary producers. In recent years, sector experts observed “a shift of buyer
power towards the retail end of the supply chain and away
from the traditionally dominant processors”.21 Due to trade
liberalisation, mergers, acquisitions and global sourcing strategies, retailers, particularly supermarket chains, managed to
reinforce their power, while farmers and smaller food processors struggled to survive by lowering their prices or offering
better terms.
internationalisation strategies and transformed themselves
into global players not only penetrating industrial country
markets but also emerging and developing country markets.
Today, large European processors such as Nestlé, Unilever,
Danone, Associated British Foods, FrieslandCampina, Lactalis
or Vion rank among the world’s top food and drink companies
(see table 1).23
The EU food processing industry comprises of many different sub-sectors including meat, beverages, dairy products,
grain mill products, animal feeds, fruits and vegetables. It is
the single largest manufacturing sector in the EU in terms of
turnover and employment, ahead of the automobile, chemicals
and machinery industries. In 2008, it employed a workforce
of 4.4 million people.22 Many of the food processors pursued
Due to the concentration process on their domestic markets,
European retailers, particularly large supermarket chains,
are also succesfully conquering global markets (see table 2).
Europe’s largest and the world’s second largest retailer, French
Carrefour, currently has over 15,600 stores around the globe,
either company-operated or as franchises. The group employs
475,000 people and 57 percent of its turnover derives from
outside France. It is present in 34 countries, including, inter
alia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia.24 Similarly, Europe’s number two retailer, the Metro Group, pursues its expansion outside
Europe through the establishment of Cash & Carry markets in,
inter alia, China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam and Egypt.25
21 Liz Dodd/Samuel Asfaha, ‘Rebalancing the supply chain: buyer power,
commodities and competition policy’, South Centre/Traidcraft, April 2008, p. 9.
23 Ibid.
22 CIAA, ‘Data & trends of the European Food and Drink Industry 2009’,
24 See: www.carrefour.com
25 See: www.metrogroup.de
11
Table 1
Top European agri-food companies 2009-2010
Headquarters
Table 2
Top European Food Retailers 2010
Sales (€ billions)
Headquarters
Sales (US$ billions)
Nestlé
Switzerland
25.1
Carrefour
France
Unilever
Netherlands/UK
12.0
Metro Group
Germany
Heineken
Netherlands
11.0
Tesco
United Kingdom
88.8
Groupe Danone
France
9.4
Schwarz Group
Germany
80.6
Vion
Netherlands
8.2
REWE
Germany
70.8
Associated British
Food
UK
7.9
Aldi
Germany
68.7
Edeka
Germany
58.5
Carlsberg
Denmark
7.3
Auchan
France
55.2
Ferrero
Italy
6.3
Ahold
The Netherlands
38.8
Danish Crown
Denmark
6.1
Casino Group
France
37.2
Südzucker
Germany
5.7
J. Sainsbury
United Kingdom
30.1
FrieslandCampina
Netherlands
5.7
Leclerc
France
29.4
Oetker Group
Germany
5.1
Delhaize Group
Belgium
27.7
Anheuser-Busch
InBev
Belgium
4.6
Intermarché
France
25.0
Tate & Lyle
UK
4.0
Adapted from: PlanetRetail/Supermarket News 201026
26
26 See: http://supermarketnews.com/profiles/top25-2010/top-25/
12
119.5
91.1
3 CAP: Winners and losers
in Europe
From the first days of European integration, agriculture formed
an essential part of the political project leading to the European
Union with its current 27 member states. In 1957, the Treaty of
Rome establishing the European Economic Community (EEC)
not only gave birth to the Common Market, i.e., a customs union
progressively dismantling tariffs on goods amongst the six
founding members, but also to the Common Agricultural Policy.
At that time, Western Europe struggled to overcome a shortage
of food supplies as a result of the devastations of the Second
World War. The EEC, particularly Germany, depended strongly
on food imports, and agricultural primary production still played
an important role in the economy of its founding members
(Belgium, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy).
In 1955, agriculture’s share of GDP was 11.5 percent and its
share of total employment 21.2 percent, on average, in the six
EEC founding countries.27 Due to structural change, these percentages decreased considerably during the following decades.
27 Henrik Zobbe, ‘The Economic and Historical Foundation of the Common
Agricultural Policy in Europe’, The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University,
Unit of Economics Working Paper 2001/12, Fredriksberg 2001.
In the EU-27 of 2007, agriculture contributes merely 2 percent
to overall GDP and 6.2 percent to total employment.28
The main issues for the architects of the Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP) in the late 1950s were the security of food supplies and the stabilisation of farm incomes, which were lagging
far behind incomes in other sectors of the economy. Accordingly, article 39 of the EEC Treaty laid down the following
objectives of the CAP:
(a) to increase agricultural productivity by promoting
technical progress and by ensuring the rational
development of agricultural production and the
optimum utilisation of the factors of production, in
particular labour;
(b) thus to ensure a fair standard of living for the
agricultural community in particular by increasing the
individual earnings of persons engaged in agriculture;
(c) to stabilise markets;
(d) to ensure the availability of supplies;
28 Pavel Ciaian/D’Artis Kancs/Johan F.M. Swinnen, ‘EU Land Markets and
the Common Agricultural Policy’, Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels
2010.
13
(e) to ensure that supplies reach consumers at
reasonable prices.29
These objectives remained unchanged over the years and were
finally integrated into the Lisbon Treaty of December 2009.30
In 1962, EEC members agreed that the CAP should be organised around three principles: 1) free intra-community trade
for agricultural products, 2) a Community preference for EEC
suppliers over third country suppliers and 3) common financing
of all CAP expenditures. In the following years, a tariff union
was created to allow free trade of agricultural products among
its members. An intervention system covering most processed
agricultural goods stimulated production, and a minimum price,
set well above the world market price, was fixed each year for
the most important product groups. In case the internal price
for a given good fell below the intervention price, the state
intervened and bought surplus quantities from food processors like grain mills or dairies, thereby increasing demand and
stabilising prices.
29 http://www.ena.lu/treaty_establishing_european_economic_community_
rome_25_march_1957-2-10730
30 http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty/treaty-on-thefunctioning-of-the-european-union-and-comments/part-3-union-policies-andinternal-actions/title-iii-agriculture-and-fisheries/181-article-39.html
14
Surpluses taken off the market had to be stored or were
exported to third countries. CAP funds not only covered storage costs but also export subsidies compensating exporters
who sold their products on world markets where prices were
far lower than on the internal market. In addition, to protect
EEC farmers from international competition, the Community
established a system of variable import levies complementing
external tariffs and ensuring that agricultural goods entering
the internal market had at least the same price as competing
domestic products.31
Regarding its aim of stimulating domestic production, the CAP
system was quite successful in the first years after its inception. Shielded from international competition and nurtured by
high guarantee prices, farmers modernised their holdings and
considerably raised productivity. They strongly mechanised
agricultural production and increased the use of agrochemical
inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides. Yet, by the 1970s, the
food trade deficit was overcome and output increased stronger
than demand leading to growing surpluses in several product
groups like dairy, sugar, meat and grains. At the same time, the
31 Pavlos Pezaros, ‘Introduction to the Common Agricultural Policy:
Principles, Objectives and Orientations’, in: Baourakis G. (ed.), The Common
Agricultural Policy of the European Union: New market trends, CIHEAM-IAMC,
Chania 1998 (Cahiers Options Méditerranéennes, No. 29).
European Community began to develop from a net importer to
a net exporter of food. During the 1980s, criticism of the CAP
multiplied as overproduction led to the accumulation of the
infamous “milk lakes” and “butter mountains”, with some of the
surpluses exported at subsidised prices and others destroyed.32
3.1 A never-ending story: CAP reforms
The rising costs for stockholding and export subsidies triggered
a first serious of reforms in the 1980s aimed at redressing
the deficits of the system. Quotas restricting the production of
milk and sugar, a limit on overall CAP spending and set-aside
payments for farmers leaving part of their land out of production were introduced. However, these measures proved to be
of only limited success. Stocks of surplus produce continued
to accumulate, and so did the budgetary expenses for the
CAP. In 1991, referring to the growing food surpluses, then
Commissioner for Agriculture Ray MacSharry, stated that “the
continuation of such a policy is not sustainable physically or
from the point of view of the budget. The status quo cannot be
defended nor maintained.”33 Mac Sharry also referred to the
32 ��
Brian Gardner, European Agriculture – Policies, production and trade,
London/New York 1996.
33 Ray MacSharry, ‘Foreword’, in: Commission of the European Communities,
social impact of the Common Agricultural Policy: “Our policy
has not prevented large numbers of farmers leaving the land.
Furthermore, 80% of resources go to 20% of farmers because
of the system’s linkage of price support to food volume.”34
In addition, the CAP came under growing pressure during the
protracted negotiations of the Uruguay Round of the GATT
(1986-1994) culminating in the establishment of the World
Trade Organisation WTO. Trading partners claimed that subsidised EU exports dumped on global markets depressed prices
and incomes of farmers worldwide. In a bid to defend its share
of agricultural markets, the US reintroduced export subsidies,
thus depressing world market prices even more. As a result,
shortly before the Uruguay Round, 14 nations, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil and Thailand,
formed the Cairns Group of agricultural exporters to pressure
the Europeans and the US into lowering their domestic farm
support and particularly their export subsidies.35
The Development and Future of the Common Agricultural Policy – Proposals of
the Commission, Green Europe, 2/91, Brussels 1991.
34 ��
Ibid.
35 Klaus Kogler, ‘Single Farm Payments in the European Union and its
Implications on New Zealand Dairy and Beef Trade’, AERU Research Report
No. 290, December 2009. See also Cairns Group website: http://cairnsgroup.
org/Pages/wto_negotiations.aspx
15
1992: The MacSharry reform
Against this background of mounting criticism, Commissioner
MacShary launched the first major CAP reform in 1992 aiming
at bringing the high domestic farm prices closer in line with
the far lower world market prices. The MacSharry reform
redirected the CAP’s main focus from price support to direct
income aids. Guarantee prices for cereals, dairy products and
meat were lowered, while farmers received direct payments
as a partly compensation for the lower farm gate prices. The
compensation payments such as several specific premiums
had been coupled to production. In the case of cereal farmers,
direct payments for price cuts were based on hectares under
cultivation, whereas livestock farmers received premiums according to heads of cattle they owned. To be eligible for these
payments, farmers were obliged to compulsory set aside part
of their land and to restrict their livestock numbers.36
1999: The Agenda 2000
Although the MacSharry reform introduced new orientations to
the CAP, it, nevertheless, remained a gradual reform unable to
36 Pavlos Pezaros, ‘Introduction to the Common Agricultural Policy:
Principles, Objectives and Orientations’, in: Baourakis G. (ed.), The Common
Agricultural Policy of the European Union: New market trends, CIHEAM-IAMC,
Chania 1998 (Cahiers Options Méditerranéennes, No. 29).
16
solve the overproduction problem. Domestic prices remained
above world market prices and surpluses continued to place a
burden on the EU budget. Thus, further reforms were inevitable. The Agenda 2000, agreed in 1999, built on the MacSharry
reform and focussed mainly on stabilising agricultural spending. Support prices for cereals, milk products and beef were
further cut and compensation payments for affected farmers
increased. “Rural development” was established as the second
pillar of the CAP complementing the first pillar covering market
support measures (see table 3).
By integrating rural development, EU policy makers facilitated
a wide range of support measures such as the diversification of rural economies, the protection of the environment
and the improvement of rural living conditions. The Agenda
2010 strengthened agri-environmental measures allowing
EU Member States to make direct payments conditional on
compliance with environmental objectives, the so-called “crosscompliance”. It also provided for the voluntary “modulation” of
direct payments, i.e., the option to link part of the payments
to criteria like employment generation or the prosperity of
the respective farm. Member States could thus reduce direct
payments in case farm holdings did not comply with certain
minimum employment requirements. Savings from modulation
could then be shifted to Pillar Two, in order to finance rural
development measures.37
2003: The Fischler reform
However, the impact of Agenda 2000 remained modest and
already in 2003 the next CAP overhaul was being undertaken.
The 2003 CAP reform, also referred to as “Mid-Term Review”
or “Fischler” reform (named after former Commissioner for
Agriculture Franz Fischler), had to accommodate the 2004 EU
enlargement by 10 Central and Eastern European countries,
followed by the accession of Cyprus and Malta in 2007. The
accession treaties stipulated that farmers from the new Member States got immediate access to CAP market support and
intervention mechanisms, whereas direct aids would be phased
in over 10 years.38
Yet, the main innovation of the 2003 reform was the alleged
“decoupling” of direct payments from production by introducing
the single payment scheme (SPS) replacing most of the former
direct payments. From January 2005, farmers were allocated
payment entitlements based on the direct aids they received
during a reference period in the past. Instead of several production based payments, they received a single farm payment
independently of the type or quantity they actually produced,
thus loosening the link between subsidy and production.
However, the Mid-Term Review still allowed part of the direct
aids for the crop and livestock sectors to remain coupled to
production.39
Furthermore, the 2003 Cap reform made cross-compliance
provisions compulsory. Recipients of single farm payments
were required to abide to Community standards relating to
public, animal and plant health, animal welfare and the environment. The modulation mechanism, introduced on a voluntary
basis by the Agenda 2000 reform, was made mandatory,
thereby allowing the reallocation of more Pillar One funds to
rural development measures of Pillar Two.40
37 Pavlos Pezaros, ‘The Agenda 2000 CAP reform agreement in the light of
the future EU enlargement’, European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA),
Working Paper 99/W/02, August 1999.
39 S.H. Gay/B. Osterburg/D. Baldock/A. Zdanowicz, ‘Recent Evolution of
the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP): state of play and environmental
potential’, FAL (Bundesforschungsanstalt für Landwirtschaft)/IEEP (Institute
for European Environmental Policy), MEACAP WP6 D4b, March 2005.
38 OECD, ‘Analysis of the 2003 CAP Reform’, Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development, Paris 2004.
40 OECD, ‘Analysis of the 2003 CAP Reform’, Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development, Paris 2004.
17
Table 3
Pillar One
CAP Pillars, Budget 2011
Financing
Type of Payments
Budget
(Billions)
Financed by the European Agricultural Guarantee
Fund EAGF.
Direct Aids
39.7
All Pillar One support is fully financed from EU
resources.
Income support for farmers through the Single Payment Scheme
Interventions in Agricultural Markets
2.9
Commodity price support through, e.g., export subsidies, purchasing and storage of surpluses, quotas
Measures developed and administered at EU level.
14.4
Pillar Two Financed by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development
Rural Development EAFRD
Axis 1: Improving the competitiveness of the agricultural and
forestry sector
All Pillar Two actions have to be co-financed
Axis 2: Improving the environment and the countryside
from national or regional funds.
Axis 3: The quality of life in rural areas and diversification of the
rural economy
EAFRD complements national, regional and
local actions. Member States may choose from
a broad menu of measures.
18
Axis 4: LEADER Programme. Implementation of local development strategies through public-private partnerships.
2008: The Health Check
The latest reform step to date has been taken with the socalled “Health Check” of 2008.41 The agreement reached
among EU agriculture ministers in November 2008 contains a
range of measures, some of which directly carrying forward
the 2003 reform. Most of the remaining payments coupled to
production where “decoupled” and moved to the Single Payment Scheme, with the only exception of premia for suckler
cows, goats and sheep, where Member States may still maintain coupled support. Modulation, i.e., shifting funds from Pillar One (mainly direct aids) to Pillar Two (rural development),
has been further strengthened, while cross compliance rules
have been simplified. Regarding the market mechanisms,
ministers agreed to phase out maize intervention, to abolish
intervention purchases of pig meat and to set barley and sorghum intervention at zero. Yet, intervention buying of wheat,
butter and skim milk powder is still possible.42
41 IIEP, ‘Towards the CAP Health Check and the European Budget Review –
The Proposals, Options for Reform, and Issues Arising’, Institute for European
Environmental Policy, September 2007.
42 See: http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/healthcheck/index_en.htm. And:
Peter Timmerman, ‘The Health Check: further steps to adapt the Common
Agricultural Policy to new realities’, Egmont Institute, European Affairs Program,
Working Paper, 2009/01.
Finally, one of the most controversial decisions was the one
percent yearly increase of the milk quota until its phasing
out in April 2015. This decision led to the milk crisis of 2009
with massive oversupplies, a decline of producer prices and
a further increase of European dairy exports replacing local
producers in third countries (see chapter 4).
Summing up the main characteristics of the CAP reform process over the last two decades, its core element – as the European Commission states – was a “shift from product support
to producer support”. Before the 1992 MacSharry reform, more
than 90 percent of all CAP expenditure went to market support,
i.e., guaranteeing high commodity prices on the internal market
by intervention purchases and export subsidies. By 2009, this
figure had fallen to 10 percent of the CAP budget (see chart 3).
The amount of export subsidies, for instance, decreased from
€10 billion in 199143 to €650 million in 2009.44
While the MacSharry reform introduced the shift from price
support to direct payments coupled to production (based on
43 European Commission, ‘Facts and figures on EU trade in agricultural
products: open to trade, open to developing countries’, Memo/02/296, Brussels,
16 December 2002.
44 European Commission, Agriculture in the European Union – Statistical and
Economic Information, Report 2010, March 2011, p. 136.
19
Chart 3 CAP budget 1980-2009
20
fixed areas or numbers of animals), the 2003 reform supposedly “decoupled” these payments from production by introducing the Single Payment Scheme. According to official estimates
for the period 2010-13, roughly 69 percent of the CAP budget
will be directed to direct payments, of which over 90 percent
are now characterised as “decoupled”. Roughly 7 percent will
be spent on market support and 24 percent on rural development.45
3.2 The decoupling fraud
However, the EU’s repeated claim that “decoupling” of its direct
payments provides support to farmers without distorting trade
or affecting production has long been questioned, particularly in
connection with the EU’s efforts to safeguard its farm policies
during the GATT Uruguay-Round and later in the WTO.
at most minimal trade-distorting effects’ and c) the blue box of
direct payments under ‘production-limiting programmes’ linked
to fixed areas or livestock numbers. Both, the green and blue
box, have been exempt from reduction commitments under the
AoA. The blue box was an outcome of the Blair House Accord,
a 1992 deal between the US and the EU to break the impasse
of the Uruguay Round negotiations. At that time, the EU relied
heavily on production-limiting programmes which had been
introduced by the MacSharry reform. Integrating the blue box
into the Agreement on Agriculture allowed the EU to effectively
exclude some 40 percent of its CAP spending from WTO reduction commitments.46
The WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) divides domestic
support for the farming sector into three categories: a) the
so-called amber box of trade-distorting measures subject to
reduction commitments, b) the green box subsidies of ‘no, or
Since the 2003 CAP reform and the “decoupling” of direct
payments, the EU began to shift large parts of its subsidies
from the blue box to the also unconstrained green box,
which today contains the large majority of CAP spending notified to the WTO by the European Union (see chart 4). According to its latest WTO notification of agricultural domestic
support covering marketing year 2008/09, payments worth
€62.6 billion fall into the green box and €5.1 billion into
the blue box, while €12.3 billion qualify as trade-distorting
45 European Commission, ‘The CAP in perspective: from market intervention
to policy innovation’, Agricultural Policy Perspectives Briefs, Brief no 1 rev,
January 2011.
46 Jim Dixon, ‘Nature Conservation and Trade Distortion : Green Box and
Blue Box Farming Subsidies in Europe’, in: Golden Gate University Law Review,
Volume 29, Issue 3, 1999, pp. 415-443.
21
Support (billion euros)
Chart 4 EU domestic support 1986-07
Year
Compiled by ICTSD from notifications
22
subsidies. Half of the green box payments – €31.3 billion –
comprise of ‘Decoupled Income Support’ mainly under the
Single Payment Scheme, followed by €7.5 billion spent on
‘Investment Aids’.47
Many experts contest the non-distorting character of large
parts of CAP payments now classified by the EU as tradeand production-neutral green box subsidies. They claim that
this “box shifting” exercise amounted to a mere repackaging
and repainting of export subsidies and trade-distorting
amber box support. Allegedly “decoupled” direct aids would
still have a trade-distorting and surplus-stimulating effect
because they increase farmers’ incomes and lower their
market risks. They enable the maintenance of production
volumes although farmers’ revenues may not cover all of
the production costs. By helping to cover fixed costs, they
allow farmers to produce at lower prices compared to nonsubsidised competitors. These direct payments also permit
the use of higher amounts of agricultural inputs increasing
not only farm productivity but also the turnover of the agrochemical industry.48
47 WTO, Committee on Agriculture, Notification, G/AG/N/EEC/68, 24
January 2011.
48 Grey, Clark, Shih and Associates, ‘Green Box Mythology: The Decoupling
Fraud’, Study Prepared for Dairy Farmers of Canada, June 2006.
In addition, all the compensation payments for cuts in intervention prices of feedstuffs (cereals, oilseeds, pulses etc.) continue
to serve as a huge input subsidy for European livestock farmers. EU food processors also benefit from these compensation
payments because “the drop in the cost of their agricultural
raw materials has increased their competitiveness”, as Jacques
Berthelot of French NGO Solidarité points out.49 Thanks to
cheaper domestic raw material supply, EU food processors
managed to sell their products on world markets at lower
prices, while at the same time reducing their export subsidy
demand.
The guaranteed revenue stream of direct payments also improves the creditworthiness of farmers enabling them to undertake productivity enhancing investments that may stimulate
overproduction. In addition, the EU and its Member States directly support farm modernisation by granting investment aids
under CAP’s Pillar Two (Rural Development), which amounted
to €7.5 billion in marketing year 2008/09. Being classified as
trade- and production-neutral green box subsidies at the WTO,
these investment aids cover, inter alia: “Aid for farm modernisation; purchase of machinery, equipment, animals, buildings
49 Jacques Berthelot, ‘Can the CAP manage without market regulation
after 2013? The CAP subsidies are incompatible with the WTO Agreement on
agriculture’, Solidarité, 2010.
23
and plantations”.50 Contrary to their alleged non-distortive
character, data from farm surveys show that these payments
actually increase productivity and production.
In several EU countries large parts of investment aids have
been given to the livestock sector, thus directly contributing
to overproduction of dairy and meat products. In Germany,
e.g., data for 2005 showed that due to investment aids given
to dairy farms the productivity increased by 40-73 percent,
the milk performance per cow by 6-10 percent, the number of
cows by 7-47 percent and the milk output by 30-59 percent. In
other countries, too, farmers used investment aids to enhance
their productive capacities:
· In Spain’s Basque Country, 70 percent of beneficiaries
stated they increased productive capacities thanks to
investment support.
· In Sweden, 70 percent of supported investments were
used for farm rationalisation.
· In Wales (UK), 91 percent of recipients reported enhanced capacity use.51
50 WTO, Committee on Agriculture, Notification, G/AG/N/EEC/68, 24
January 2011.
51 Marita Wiggerthale, ‘Surveys show EU’s Green Box subsidies are trade-
24
Consequently, the oversupply of several agricultural and food
items continues despite the string of CAP reforms. Although
the surpluses have generally fallen since the MacSharry
reform of 1992, there are still many sectors where production
exceeds domestic demand. EU figures exhibit considerable net
production surpluses for wheat, barley, pork, poultry, skim milk
powder, butter and cheese, with skim milk powder production
exceeding domestic consumption more than 20 percent.52
Therefore, the pressure for the European food industry to seek
global markets is set to continue.
3.3 Unequal distribution of funds
The unequal distribution of CAP funds, i.e., the allocation of
large sums to the biggest farms and food processors also
leads to overproduction, as it facilitates the concentration into
larger farming units which realise higher outputs due to greater
economies of scale. According to OECD figures, in 2007, the 25
percent largest farms in the EU-27 were allocated 74 percent
distorting’, TWN Info Service on Trade and WTO Issues (Aug 07/05), 24 August
2007.
52 European Commission, ‘The CAP in perspective: from market intervention
to policy innovation’, Agricultural Policy Perspectives Briefs, Brief no 1 rev,
January 2011, p. 5.
of total CAP support and the 25 percent smallest farms only 3
percent.53
detriment of the majority of small family farms serving the local
markets but struggling to survive.
These findings are also being confirmed when only considering
direct payments. In 2009, approximately 18 percent of mainly
larger farms in the EU-27 received 85 percent of direct payments.54 As table 4 shows, 43 percent of the 7.8 million beneficiaries (about 3.4 million) were allocated direct payments of
less than €500 per holding in 2009. On the other hand, a privileged minority of 0.39 percent of beneficiaries (roughly 31,000)
received more than €100,000 and 0.1 percent (about 8,000)
more than €200,000 per holding in the same year. About 1,410
holdings range in the highest class having received more than
€500,000 in 2009 (see table 4). The European Commission
itself admits that “the distribution of direct payments between
beneficiaries also mainly reflects the differences in farm size”.55
In other words, this unequal distribution favours large rationalisied, input-intensive and export-oriented factory farms, to the
The change of transparency rules in 2009 requiring Member
States to publish information on CAP beneficiaries shed some
more light on the skewed distribution of EU farm payments.
Those receiving the most funds not only comprise large factory
farms but also many food processors. Big sugar companies are
among the largest beneficiaries. In 2009, for instance, Tereos
(France) received €177 million, Saint Louis Sucre (France)
€143 million, Azucarera Ebro (Spain) €119 million and Südzucker (Germany) €42 million. Big dairy companies, amongst
them several cooperatives, were also allocated large sums,
as, e.g., Nordmilch AG (Germany) with €51 million, Lactalis
(France) €22 million and Arla Foods (Denmark) €13 million.56
53 Catherine Moreddu, ‘Distribution of Support and Income in Agriculture’,
OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Working Papers No. 46, OECD 2011,
Annex C.
54 European Commission, ‘Indicative Figures of the Distribution of Farm Aid,
By Size-Class of Aid’, Financial Year 2009, see: http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/
funding/directaid/distribution_en.htm
55 European Commission, ‘Indicative Figures of the Distribution of Farm Aid,
By Size-Class of Aid’, Financial Year 2009, p. 7.
Many of the same companies also enjoyed large payments in
the following year. In 2010, Azucarera Ebro got €61 million,
Arla Foods €16 million, Nordmilch €8 million and Südzucker
€2,6 million. Large companies like Dutch dairy cooperative
FrieslandCampina received subsidies for several of their
subsidiaries not only in the Netherlands, but also in Spain and
Germany. Considering only amounts of more than €1 million,
56 Farmsubsidy.org, 2009 Millionaires, see: http://capreform.eu/2009-dataharvest/
25
Distribution of Direct Payments in the EU-27, 2009
Table 4
Direct payments per holding
Number of beneficiaries
(in thousands)
Relative share of number
of beneficiaries (in %)
<0€
5.65
0.07
≥ 0 and < 500 €
3,442.10
43.74
≥ 500 and < 1,250 €
1,468.84
18.67
≥ 1,250 and < 2,000 €
594.57
7.56
≥ 2,000 and < 5,000 €
904.05
11.49
≥ 5,000 and < 10,000 €
551.09
7.00
≥ 10,000 and < 20,000 €
423.50
5.38
≥ 20,000 and < 50,000 €
354.06
4.50
≥ 50,000 and < 100,000 €
93.84
1.19
≥ 100,000 and < 200,000 €
22.89
0.29
≥ 200,000 and < 300,000 €
4.21
0.05
≥ 300,000 and < 500,000 €
2.36
0.03
≥ 500,000 €
1.41
0.02
Totals
7,868.57
100.00
Source: European Commission, Indicative figures on the distribution of aid, by size-class of aid (Financial year 2009)
26
FrieslandCampina subsidiaries were handed out eight individual
payments ranging from €1,2 million to €3,7 million in 2010
alone.57 The same is true for one of the largest food producers
and grain traders in the world, US giant Cargill with yearly
revenues of some $120 billion. In 2008, Cargill received at least
€10.5 million, collecting CAP subsidies in eight EU countries.58
Taking account of several years of total CAP payments, including direct aids, market support and rural development, the
website “farmsubsidy.org” presents a list of all time top CAP
recipients (see table 5).
All of these CAP recipients are large export-oriented food
companies, several of which with a strong presence outside
Europe. Dairy company FrieslandCampina, e.g., has a global
presence with locations in, inter alia, Ghana, Nigeria, SaudiArabia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and
Argentina.59 The same is true for Danish dairy company Arla
Foods with locations in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Dominican
Republic, Lebanon, Saudi-Arabia, Bangladesh, China, Vietnam
57 Farmsubsidy.org, 2010 Millionaires,
talusdesign.co.uk/millionaires2010.xls
see:
http://ftp.farmsubsidy.
and others.60 Food ingredient producer Tate & Lyle sells its
products to customers around the world and owns production facilities and sales offices in, inter alia, Mexico, Colombia,
Argentina, Brazil, Morocco, South Africa, India, China, Vietnam,
the Philippines and Indonesia.61 Nestlé, the food giant headquartered in Switzerland and employing some 280,000 people, has
an almost global presence.62
Besides large factory farms and food processors, profiteers
of the CAP system also include export-oriented food traders
and the big retailers such as supermarket chains. Processors,
traders and retailers all benefit of the cheap domestic raw
material supply triggered by the cut and partial phasing out of
intervention prices combined with direct compensation payments mainly favouring rationalised cereal and livestock farms.
The direct payments, now by far the most dominant part of
CAP support, act like a gigantic cross-subsidy for the exportoriented food business effectively replacing the decreased
export refunds. This cross-subsidisation of the food industry
facilitates sales on international markets at dumping levels, i.e.,
at prices below production costs. Another important profiteer
58 ��
Doreen Carvajal, Stephen Castle, ‘European Subsidies Stray From the
Farm’, New York Times, 16 July 2009.
60 http://www.arla.com/
59 http://www.frieslandcampina.com/english/
62 http://www.nestle.com
61 http://www.tateandlyle.com/
27
Table 5
Top CAP beneficiaries (payments up to 2009)
1
FrieslandCampina
Netherlands
2
Arla Foods
Denmark
€951,731,484 (since 2000)
3
Tate & Lyle
UK
€827,979,239 (since 1999)
4
Avebe
Netherlands
€589.534,206 (since 1997)
5
Danisco
Denmark
6
Hoogwegt
Netherlands
7
Danish Crown
Denmark
8
Eridania Sadam
Italy
€225,357,110 (since 2002)
9
Nestlé UK
UK
€196,777,997 (since 1999)
10
Saint Louis Sucre S.A.
France
Source: www.farmsubsidy.org
28
€1,605,926,904 (since 1997)
€484,863,255 (since 2000)
€356,925,537 (since 1997)
€292,629,690 (since 2000)
€196,464,108 (since 2004)
of this highly skewed support system is the agricultural input
industry, particularly the agrochemical industry, since the
steady income stream guaranteed by the Single Payment
Scheme allows already large farms to further intensify production and to increase the use of agricultural inputs like chemical
fertilizers and pesticides.
Box 1 The Queen is a farmer
CAP funds for the wealthy
‘Feed the rich!’ That seems to be the slogan of those
showering CAP funds onto the wealthy, among them several
land-owning aristocrats. For years, the Queen of England
belongs to the largest recipients of European farm subsidies.
In 2008, she received €500,000 in CAP aids for private land
around the Royal Residence of Sadringham. A Buckingham
Palace spokesman said: “The Queen is a landowner and a
farmer. She receives subsidy, just as any other farmer would
do.”63 In the same year, Prince Charles, heir to the throne,
received €200,000 for his landholdings. The third richest
person in the UK, the Duke of Westminster,
collected €554,000 for his farm. The EU also transferred
€508,000 to Prince Albert II of Monaco, whose fortune is
estimated at €2 billion. The Prince of this Mediterranean tax
haven owns a wheat farm in the North of France.64 Germany’s
largest private landowner and Europe’s largest forest owner,
billiardaire Prince Albert of Thurn and Taxis, got €575,000
in 2008 and more than €1 million in 2009 out of the CAP
budget.65
63 ��
‘Queen Elizabeth received 500,000€ of EU subsidies in 2008’, Digital
Journal, 1 May 2009.
64 ��
Doreen Carvajal, Stephen Castle, ‘European Subsidies Stray From the
Farm’, New York Times, 16 July 2009.
65 ��
Michael Kaczmarek, ‘EU-Agrargeld: Topverdiener, Intransparenz,
Korruption‘, Euractiv.de, 6 May 2010.
29
3.4 The losers: Small farms
In the primary production sector the number of agricultural
holdings is gradually shrinking while their economic and
physical size is increasing. Almost all EU member states experienced a steady decline in the number of agricultural holdings
between 1993 and 2005. Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Denmark, Spain and Italy, for instance, witnessed declines
of 20 to 30 percent.66 According to the latest Eurostat farm
structure survey, EU-27 farm numbers were shrinking from 15
million in 2003 to 13.7 million in 2007.67
In terms of economic size, in 2007 about 81 percent of all
holdings – 11.1 million – are small farms marketing less
than half of their production. Of these small holdings, 4.7
million are considered as semi-subsistence and 6.4 million
as subsistence farms, with the latter producing primarily for their own consumption. In terms of physical size,
European holdings of less than 5 hectares are viewed as
small farms. According to this physical measure, there were
approximately 9.6 million small farms in 2007 (around 70
30
percent of all holdings), operating on only 8.4 percent of the
agricultural area of the EU.68
The EU enlargements in 2004 and 2007 with the accession
of 12 Central and Eastern European countries along with
Malta and Cyprus increased the importance of small farms
in the EU. Today, 59 percent of all EU agricultural holdings
belong to the accession countries (EU-12). The average size
of EU-12 farms does not exceede 6 hectares, while it is 22
hectares in the former EU-15 countries. The Eastern European farming sectors are therefore characterised by larger
numbers of agricultural holdings with comparatively low
sizes, a lot of them subsistence farms. It is estimated “that
some 70% of total farms in Bulgaria and 81% in Romania
self-consume more than half of their production”.69 In seven
of the 12 new member states most farms produce mainly for
self-consumption.70
68 European Network for Rural Development, ‘Semi-subsistence farming in
Europe: Concepts and key issues’, Background Paper, April 2010.
66 Eurostat, ‘Food: from farm to fork statistics’, 2008 edition, Eurostat
Pocketbooks.
69 Carmen Hubbard, Small Farms in the EU: How Small is Small?,
Paper presented at the 111th EAAE-IAAE Seminar ‘Small Farms: Decline or
Persistence’, University of Kent, Canterbury, 26-27th June 2009.
67 Eurostat, ‘Agricultural Statistics: Main results – 2008-2009’, 2010 edition,
Eurostat Pocketbooks.
70 European Network for Rural Development, ‘Semi-subsistence farming in
Europe: Concepts and key issues’, Background Paper, April 2010.
Agriculture in the EU still remains to be a largely family-run
business. In terms of labour force, at least 26.4 million persons
worked regularly on all EU agricultural holdings in 2007, with
40 percent of them (about 10 million) on subsistence farms.
However, the labour force of EU farms is also constantly
diminishing, decreasing from 30.5 million persons in 2003 to
26.4 million in 2007.71 In the period 2000-2007, the agricultural
labour force on larger holdings (excluding subsistence farms)
shrank by 19.5 percent across the EU-27. “The most rapid
declines (between 32% and 44%) were registered in Romania,
Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia and Estonia, in large parts reflecting structural adjustments”, as Eurostat reports.72
In sum, despite the ongoing structural adjustment process,
small farms continue to be a very important but neglected part
of the rural economy. They still account for the largest share of
farm holdings, employ the vast majority of agricultural labourers and produce the majority of agricultural goods. However,
the EU Common Agricultural Policy did everything to eliminate
this sector. As agricultural economist Carmen Hubbard puts it:
“The design of the CAP from the outset, and subsequently in its
reforms, not only ignored small farms, but forced them either
to amalgamate or exit the sector via structural change. Small
farms were perceived as an obstacle in the modernisation of
EU agriculture.”74
EU figures also confirm the structural change taking place in
the farming sector. While the number of small subsistence
farms decreased by 10 percent between 2003 and 2007,
the number of the largest farms (in terms of economic size)
increased by 10 percent. While Western Europe saw a more
gradual decline of small farms, the rate of decrease in some of
the accession countries is much faster than in the West.73
72 Eurostat, ‘Food: from farm to fork statistics’, 2008 edition, Eurostat
Pocketbooks.
74 Carmen Hubbard, Small Farms in the EU: How Small is Small?,
Paper presented at the 111th EAAE-IAAE Seminar ‘Small Farms: Decline or
Persistence’, University of Kent, Canterbury, 26-27th June 2009.
31
4 CAP impacts in
the Global South
4.1 Import dependency and food deficit
One of the main problems of food insecure countries today is
their growing food import dependency, a process which started
in the 1980s. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the
ongoing dumping of European food products on world markets
contributed to this development and exacerbated the food insecurity in many parts of the world.
Trade liberalisation and structural adjustment programmes
imposed by the World Bank and the IMF led to the erosion of
developing countries’ traditional surplus in agricultural trade.
The policies of international financial institutions and development agencies compelled Southern governments to cut support
for domestic agriculture, dismantle state-owned agricultural
marketing boards, open markets for food imports and to
switch from staple food production for local markets to cash
crop cultivation for export markets. Combined with the neglect
of agriculture by governments and development assistence,
32
these policies triggered the rising agricultural trade deficit of
the Global South. Until 1985, developing countries’ agricultural
trade balance exhibited a net surplus of more than $10 billion
a year. In the following two decades, this surplus turned into a
large deficit amounting to almost $30 billion in 2005 (see chart
5).
Due to stagnating demand and declining prices for tropical
beverages and fruits (coffee, cocoa, tea, bananas etc.), the
switch to cash crop exports did not result in sufficient trade
revenues to compensate for the growing imports of basic food
items like cereals, dairy products, meat and vegetable oils. FAO
projections indicate a further deepening of the food import
dependency of developing countries in the coming years, irrespective of the fact that some emerging markets like Brazil,
Argentina or Indonesia increased their exports of basic foods
like cereals and vegetable oils.75
Nowadays, two thirds of developing countries are net-food
importers, mainly bying staple foods like cereals, dairy products, oilcrops, meat and sugar on the world market, with cereals the single most important item. Cereals continue to be the
75 ��
FAO, World agriculture: towards 2030/2050, Interim report, Rome 2006,
pp. 30-65.
Chart 5 Net agricultural trade balance: developing countries, 1961-2004
33
largest part of the human diet, particularly in the South where
the consumption of wheat, maize, rice, sorghum or millet
provides 54 percent of total calories.76 As Harvard botanist
Paul Mangelsdorf once put it, “these plants quite literally stand
between mankind and starvation”.77 However, the main cereal
exporters are a handful of industrialised countries like the EU,
US, Canada and Australia, whereas developing countries as a
group heavily depend on the world market. According to FAO
estimates, in 2010/11, global cereal imports amount to 275
million tonnes, 212 million of which are bought by developing
countries.78
The overdependency on a few cereal-exporting countries is
highly risky, because policy decisions, market developments
and adverse weather events in these countries may negatively
affect cereal availability and prices on the world market, as was
the case during the price spike of 2007/08 and the current one
that began in the second half of 2010 (see chart 6). Volatility
and levels of food prices have generally increased in the last
years, so that food prices are now sharply fluctuating at double
Import dependency grew most among the world’s poorest
regions, particularly the 48 Least Developed Countries (LDCs)80
and the 70 Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDC).81 More
than half of the LIFDCs have a very high cereal import dependeny relying on imports for more than 30 percent of their cereal
consumption. In more than 20 LIFDCs the import/consumption
ratio even surpasses 50 percent like, e.g., in Congo, Mauritania,
Liberia, Somalia, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Yemen, Georgia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea and Haiti.82
Many of these countries are now paying the price for their lost
food self-sufficiency. Between 2002 and 2008, LDC’s food
import bill already rose more than twofold from $9 billion to
$24 billion.83 For 2011, it is estimated that their import bill will
79 ��
HLPE, ‘Price volatility and food security’, Report of the High Level Panel of
Experts (HLPE) on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food
Security, HLPE Report 1, Rome, July 2011.
76 ��
Ibid., p. 23.
80 �
http://www.unohrlls.org/en/ldc/25/
77 ��
Paul C. Mangelsdorf, ‘Genetic Potentials for Increasing Yields of Food
Crops and Animals’, in: National Academy of Sciences, Prospects of the World
Food Supply – A Symposium, Washington 1966, pp. 66-71.
81 �
http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/lifdc.asp
78 ��
FAO, ‘Food Outlook’, June 2011.
34
the average level of 1990-2006, causing hardship for millions of
consumers in import dependent countries.79
82 ��
FAO, ‘Crop Prospects and Food Situation’, June 2011.
83 ��
UNCTAD, The Least Developed Countries Report 2010: Towards a New
International Development Architecture for LDCs, New York/Geneva 2010, p. 16.
Chart 6 Food Price Index, monthly, January 1990-May 2011 (2000=100)
Source: World Bank (2011)
35
reach $33 billion – a more than threefold increase compared
to 2002. However, FAO warns that “escalated bills for these
groups do not necessarily imply greater food availability, as in
numerous LDCs and LIFDCs increased procurement of basic
foodstuffs, especially staples from international markets, will
only compensate for falling domestic supply”.84 In other words,
although paying ever more for imports, many countries will still
be unable to provide sufficient food for their people because of
lacking domestic supplies.
As long as global food prices remained comparatively low,
and this was the case for 25 years since the mid-1970s, the
increased reliance in imports helped governments to provide
consumers, particularly in urban areas, with affordable food
without having to invest in local staple food production. For
development agencies the two and a half decades of depressed
agricultural prices served as a convenient excuse for cutting their rural development budgets, whereas industrialised
countries presented their growing food exports to the South as
a contribution to global food security. But nowadays, against
the backdrop of rising and increasingly volatile food prices, the
negligence of agriculture and the shortage of domestic staple
food production caused by import dependency contribute to the
84 ��
FAO, ‘Food Outlook’, June 2011.
36
deteriorating food security and growing vulnerability of many
regions in the South.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de
Schutter, criticises that the plight of import dependent countries constitutes a blind spot of European agricultural policy
making: “One underestimated part of the debate on the CAP
reform concerns its impact on the right to food in developing
countries, particularly on poor, net-food-importing countries
that are in particularly vulnerable situations.”85 The main
challenge for these countries would be to ensure a transition
towards relocalised food systems with higher rural incomes
and limited dependency on international markets. De Schutter
asserts that the “EU has a responsibility to facilitate such a
transition. This means encouraging developing countries, who
currently depend on food imports, to feed themselves in order
to gradually reduce such dependency.”86 But for almost four
decades now, the CAP has quite the opposite effect. It deepens
the import dependency in the developing world to secure export markets and profits for the European food industry.
85 ��
Olivier de Schutter, ‘The Common Agricultural Policy towards 2020: The
role of the European Union in supporting the realisation of the right to food’,
Comments and Recommendations by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on
the right to food, 17 June 2011, p. 1.
86 ��
Ibid., p. 3
European agribusiness has been and continues to be a large
profiteer of developing countries’ import dependency. While
developing countries as a whole largely lost their agricultural
trade shares, the EU massively increased its own part of the
global export markets. It is estimated that 80 percent of the
increased import demand in the Global South during the 1970s
was met by the European Community and the United States.87
At that time, the European Community switched from a net
importer to a net exporter of major agricultural commodities
like cereals, milk, beef and sugar due to its oversupplies stimulated by high CAP intervention prices and its export subsidy
payments (see chapter 3). However, the rise of the EC as an
agricultural trade power triggered conflicts with the US, who
lost growing market shares to European competitors. To defend
their trade positions on third country markets, both trade powers entered into a costly subsidy race which displaced millions
of farmers in the South.
4.2 Colonising food: EU cereal exports
87 ��
Pat Ivory, ‘Food Import Growth in the Developing Countries’, Trócaire
Development Review, Dublin, 1990, pp. 59-71.
88 ��
Guilia Listorti, ‘Testing international price transmission under policy
intervention. An application to the soft wheat market’, Associazione Alessandro
Bartola, PhD Studies Series, Volume 6, Ancona 2009.
CAP support allowed European producers to drastically
increase its wheat exports on the world market. In the 1970s
and 80s, European wheat exports grew threefold from less
than 10 million tonnes to almost 30 million tonnes, thus directly
challenging the dominant market position of the US.88 At that
time, North Africa was the main battlefield in the trade war
on wheat market shares. To conquer these markets, the EUs
export subsidy for wheat climbed to over $120 a tonne, which
was often even higher than the world price itself. Thanks to
these subsidies, the EU’s wheat market share in North Africa
rose from 2 percent in 1977 to 42 percent in the early 1980s
while the US share dropped almost by half from 42 percent to
26 percent.89
The US retaliated in 1985 by implementing the Export Enhancement Program (EEP), a targeted subsidy scheme for wheat
exports. In the 1985-88 period, the North-Americans spent
about $1.6 billion to recapture their market shares in Algeria,
89 ��
London/New York 1996, p.75-78.
37
Morocco Egypt and Tunisia.90 Countering the US efforts, the EU
in turn further increased its cereals export subsidies, which
climbed to ECU 2.7 billion in 1989.91
To defend its subsidy schemes during the negotiations of the
Uruguay Round, European politicians even proposed to create
a global cereals cartel dividing the world market into “zones
of influence” among the major exporters.92 According to these
proposals, Africa would have fallen to the Europeans, South
East Asia to the Australians and Latin America to the Americans.93 Unfortunately, this idea became at least partly true.
Today, the EU is the world’s second largest wheat exporter,
controlling 17 percent of the world market in the last three marketing years 2008/09 to 2010/11.94 Africa has become the main
destination for EU wheat exports buying up more than three
quarters of the European cereals offered on the world market,
with Sub-Sahara Africa playing an increasingly important role
(see chart 7). According to Euroflour, a trade body of the EU
flour industry, over half of all EU wheat flour is destined for
Sub-Sahara Africa.95
By conquering the world market with subsidised wheat, the
EU depressed world market prices and farmers’ incomes, particularly in those countries that cannot afford similar support.
According to agricultural analyst Brian Gardner, the EU-US
subsidy race set in motion a “vicious circle as rising subsidies
chase a falling world price”.96 It has been estimated that
without CAP subsidies the world market price of wheat would
have been 9 to 12 percent higher in the 1980s.97 Uncounted
farming families and food producers lost their livelihoods as a
direct effect of those subsidies. European wheat dumping also
90 ��
Ibid., p. 78.
contributed to changing dietary patterns in the South favouring
91 ��
Rudolf Buntzel-Cano, ‘The Historic Development of Antidumping
the production and consumption of wheat-derived products
Provisions within the Framework of the GATT’, in: Germanwatch, ‘Stop
at the expense of locally grown crops like cassava, sorghum,
Dumping – Promote Food Security!’, Berlin/Bonn 2004, p. 13-21.
millet, maize or rice.
92 ��
London/New York 1996, p. 81.
93 ��
Rudolf Buntzel-Cano, ‘The Historic Development of Antidumping
Provisions within the Framework of the GATT’, in: Germanwatch, ‘Stop
Dumping – Promote Food Security!’, Berlin/Bonn 2004, p. 13-21.
94 ��
Daniel O’Brien, ‘World Wheat Market Supply-Demand Trends’, Kansas
State University, 4 March 2011, www.agmanager.info
38
95 ��
J. Rossy, Euroflour, Presentation, Seminar DG Agri, 25 June 2007,
Brussels.
96 ��
London/New York 1996, p. 79.
97 ��
Ibid.
Chart 7 EU exports of wheat and meslin
Source: Eurostat 2003
39
Changing eating habits: Wheat flour in Kenya
Kenya, e.g., imports cheap wheat flour from Egypt and Mauritius, large parts of which have been manufactured using
subsidised EU wheat. All three countries belong to the Common
Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) which allows its members preferential access for wheat flour as long as
COMESA’s rules of origin are being respected.98 Mercy Karanja
of the Kenyan National Farmer’s Union describes how Kenyan
wheat farmers suffered from a sudden influx of wheat and
wheat flour imports in 2001: “Egypt suddenly started selling
flour very cheaply, which led to a crisis for wheat producers.
There was a huge surplus on the market, and farmers had to
sell their wheat at very low prices.”99
Kenyan millers refused to purchase local wheat as they could
not compete with the cheap imported flour. As a consequence,
many farmers faced ruin because wheat prices sank by more
than 30 percent. Due to the weak competitiveness against imported wheat products, farmers who survived the price shock
shifted to others activities like maize cropping or dairy farming.
98 ��
Raphael Gitau, Samuel Mburu, Mary K. Mathenge, ‘Trade and Agricultural
Competitiveness for Growth, Food Security and Poverty Reduction: A Case of
Wheat and Rice Production in Kenya’, Draft Report, Nairobi 2010.
99 ��
Cited in: Action Aid, ‘Farmgate – The developmental impact of agricultural
subsidies’, London 2002, p. 16.
40
“This has aggravated the decline in domestic wheat production
and increased reliance on wheat imports”, concludes a study
by KIPPRA, the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and
Analysis.100 The institute also warns that future sources of
wheat imports “may be unpredictable”.101
The Kenyan government reacted to the import surge by invoking the COMESA safeguard clause enabling only temporary
application of an import duty on wheat flour imports from
COMESA members. But the safeguard measure was too weak
to effectively protect local farmers and millers, who continued
to complain about subsidised EU wheat channelled via Egypt
to the country in the following years. In early 2011, the Kenyan
Cereal Millers Association asserted that “it has been difficult
to compete with flour from Egypt because almost 50 percent
of its grain is imported from European countries which heavily
subsidise their agricultural produce.”102 Mauritius would even
import its entire wheat grain from the EU while continuing to
export its flour to Kenya at zero duty.
100 ��
Hezron Nyangito, Moses M Ikiara, Eric E. Ronge, ‘Performance of
Kenya’s Wheat Industry and Prospects for Regional Trade in Wheat Products’,
Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, KIPPRA Discussion
Paper No. 17, November 2002, p. 39.
101 ��
Ibid., p. 7.
102 ��
George Omondi, ‘Millers get boost as turmoil batters Egyptian exports’,
Business Daily, 11 February 2011.
Under British colonial rule, settler farmers introduced wheat
cultivation in Kenya. After experimental production of wheat
by the Church Missionary Society started in 1895, Lord
Delamere, a pioneer farmer, began commercial wheat production in 1904. In the following years, thousands of Africans
were expelled from their lands. Large tracts of grazing land,
previously belonging to Maasai herders, were converted into
commercial farms producing wheat and other crops. Most
of the wheat output served to feed the urban population of
cities like Mombasa and Nairobi. In the 1920ies, the Colonial
government appointed the Browning Committee to protect
and promote European settlers’ food production and to
develop legislation prohibiting the marketing of food produced
by Africans.103
After independence, in 1963, the Kenyan government retransferred settler farms to land hungry Africans. As many
smallholders switched to maize and dairy farming, wheat
production could not keep up with the growing domestic
demand, so that Kenya became a net importer of wheat by
1973. The cutback on government support for agriculture,
103 ��
David W. Makanda, James F. Oehmke, ‘Promise and Problem in
the Development of Kenya’s Wheat Agriculture’, Michigan State University,
Department of Agricultural Economics, Staff Paper No. 93-33, July 1993, PNABS-773.
particularly smallholders’ staple food production, as part of
liberalisation and structural adjustment measures sharply
increased the level of wheat imports, particularly since the
1990s. Between 1992 and 2009, the highly volatile imports
rose from 100,000 to 780,000 tonnes.104 Nowadays, the
country only produces less than 40 percent of its own wheat
requirements, the rest is being imported, and import dependency continues to grow.105
By introducing wheat, the British also colonised African eating
habits, so that wheat-based products like flour, breads, noodles
and biscuits gained large importance in the Kenyan diet.
Measured in energy consumption, today, wheat ranks second
behind maize as a staple food. Kenyans derive 183 kilocalories
from wheat per day, which is a quite high figure compared to
an average of 78 kilocalories in the East African region where
traditional wheat substitutes like cassava, plantain, millet or
sorghum continue to play more important roles.106 In Kenyas
104 ��
Kang’ethe W. Gitu, ‘Agricultural Development and Food Security in SubSaharan Africa (SSA): Building a Case for more Public Support – The Case
of Kenya’, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Policy Assistance Series,
Working Paper No. 03, Rome 2006.
105 ��
Wheat and Rice Production in Kenya’, Draft Report, Nairobi 2010.
106 ��
USDA, ‘Kenya Wheat Report’, GAIN Report, 12 July 2011.
41
urban areas, wheat has even overtaken maize as a food staple.
Between 1995 and 2003, the share of wheat in the total urban
household expenditure spent on the four major staple foods
(maize, wheat, rice and cooking bananas) rose from 35 to 44
percent.107
The changing consumption patterns also impeded initiatives to
revert to the cultivation of drought resistant indigenous crops
which would limit the risk of food shortages. In a report for
the FAO, Kang’ehte Gitu, a former Permanent Secretary in the
Kenyan Labour Ministry, deplores that “the market has not been
overly receptive (…) to indigenous crop varieties like millet, cassava, sorghum and cowpeas. It has also become increasingly
difficult to convince consumers that their traditional crops and
vegetables are not only well-suited to local climatic conditions,
but are also nutritious.”108
42
1995 and 2003, the domestic price for wheat flour declined
by 24 percent and for wheat bread by 12 percent.109 But
nowadays, Kenyan consumers face growing food security
risks from higher and more volatile world market prices, as
has already been witnessed during the 2007-08 price spike. In
the period 2003-2008, the country’s expenditure on imported
unmilled wheat increased by 128 percent. The higher world
market prices contributed to escalating domestic wheat prices
which almost doubled. In the period 2006-2009, the price per
bag of wheat climbed from 1,700 to more than 3,500 Kenyan
Shilling.110
Kenyas wheat dependency increased in times of comparatively
low world market and domestic prices for grains. Between
Kenya’s vulnerability is further exacerbated by the risk of adverse climatic conditions like the current drought in the Horn of
Africa, as the country depends on cash crops exports (mainly
tea, coffee and horticulture) to finance its food imports. As a
result, the government’s support of cash crop cultivation to
the detriment of staple foods did not strengthen food security
– quite to the contrary, as Kang’ehte Gitu confirms: “The food
107 ��
Milu Muyanga et al., ‘Staple Food Consumption Patterns in Urban Kenya:
Trends and Policy Implications’, Tegemeo Institute of Agricultural Policy and
Development, Working Paper 16, Nairobi 2005.
109 ��
Milu Muyanga et al., ‘Staple Food Consumption Patterns in Urban Kenya:
Trends and Policy Implications’, Tegemeo Institute of Agricultural Policy and
Development, Working Paper 16, Nairobi 2005.
108 ��
Working Paper No. 03, Rome 2006, p. 10.
110 ��
Wheat and Rice Production in Kenya’, Tegemeo Institute, Draft Report, Nairobi
2010.
available per capita has declined, despite the success in expansion of export crops.” 111
According to a household survey conducted by the University
of Nairobi, the cereal price inflation, which also affected maize
and other grains, increased poverty rates and food insecurity. In
Kenya, the majority of households – including rural and urban
ones – are net food buyers, and food constitutes between 40
and 62 percent of household expenditure. Due to the escalating
food costs, in 2008, the number of poor households among urban dwellers rose by 31 percent, the number of poor pastoralist
households by 23 percent, poor agro-pastoralists by 19 percent
and poor farmers in marginals areas by 13 percent. Many of
the affected tried to cope with the price surge by reducing
the frequency of meals or bying cheaper, less nutritious food,
thereby increasing the risk of malnutrition and disease.112
Cereal price shock in West Africa
West Africa faces similar risks. Suffering from a growing cereals deficit, the region has become highly dependent on European wheat. Unlike Kenya’s farmers, West African peasants
generally do not cultivate wheat, so that the growing demand
is almost exclusively covered by external sources. Between
1990 and 2007, the imports of wheat and wheat flour into the
fifteen member Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS) more than tripled from 1.3 million to 4.9 million
tonnes.113 With the exception of Nigeria and Ghana, the regions’
countries are mainly supplied by European producers.114 Wheat
flour imports of the eight member West African Economic and
Monetary Union (WAEMU) originating in the European Union
even exploded in the last 15 years (see chart 8).
But in times of escalating prices, swelling import bills put
a heavy burden on states’ budgets and severely impact on
consumers´ purchasing power by raising the overall level
111 ��
Working Paper No. 03, Rome 2006, p. xii.
113 ��
Roger Blein, Bio Goura Soulé, ‘La céréaliculture ouest africaine: situation
actuelle et évolutions récentes, initiatives des organisations paysannes,
principeaux enjeux et défis à relever’, Note de synthése, ROPPA/SOS Faim,
November 2010.
112 ��
Julius J. Okello, ‘The 2007-2008 Food Price Swing: Impact and Policies
in Kenya’, Discussion Paper, FAO Trade and Markets Division, June 2009.
114 ��
ECOWAS, ‘Cadre de Politique Agricole pour l’Afrique de l’Ouest’,
Document de Référence, July 2004.
43
Chart 8 Wheat flour imports in West Africa 1995-2006
million euros
In Senegal, cereal imports – mainly rice and wheat – contributed to the dramatic growth of the country’s trade deficit. In the
period 2006-2008, the wheat import bill alone doubled from
$78 million to $158 million. Neighbouring Mauritania faired even
worse as the expenses for wheat imports shot up from $43
million to $109 million.116 The price explosion lowered consumers’ purchasing power, with the overall inflation reaching 7
percent in Senegal after having oscillated around 3 percent for
the ten preceding years.117 The Food Crisis Prevention Network
warned that in the whole West African region “the cost of
staple grain crops is becoming prohibitive, making them virtually inaccessible for the poorest households”.118
flour
other cereal
based products
pasta
of food costs. The Food Crisis Prevention Network (FCPN),
a body monitoring the food situation in West Africa and the
Sahel, found “that since 2006/07, rising prices for imported
foodstuffs, particularly rice and wheat, have influenced the
prices of local grain crops. The speed at which this has occurred depends on the level of import dependency of the area
44
in question”.115 Due to their high degree of import dependency,
Atlantic coast countries like Senegal and Mauritania were
particularly hard hit.
115 ��
Food Crisis Prevention Network, ‘A paradox: good harvest forecasts and
exceptionally high cereal prices in West Africa’, Food Security Information Note,
No. 28, February 2009.
116 ��
UN Comtrade, International Trade Statistics Yearbook 2008, http://
comtrade.un.org/pb/CountryPagesNew.aspx?y=2008
117 ��
Dorothée Boccanfuso, Luc Savard, ‘The Food Crisis and its Impacts on
Poverty in Senegal and Mali: Crossed Destinies’, Université de Sherbrooke,
CRÉDI, Working Paper 08-20, November 2008.
118 ��
Food Crisis Prevention Network, ‘A paradox: good harvest forecasts and
exceptionally high cereal prices in West Africa’, Food Security Information Note,
No. 28, February 2009.
However, the recent price spikes in West Africa also stimulated
the search for alternatives to cereal imports, an endeavour that
has already been dubbed the “decolonisation of bread”.119 In
Cameroon, a coalition of civil society organisations launched a
campaign to strengthen national food sovereignty by reducing
imports and overcoming the reluctance of producers and consumers to support indigenous crops (“Zéro produit alimentaire
importé”). The coalition is asking the government to support
the introduction of at least 20 percent domestic flours made
of local tuber crops like yams, sweet potatoes or manioc in
bread-making. By doing so, the country would save some €17
million spent on wheat imports, whilst 96,000 rural jobs could
be created to produce the additional 79,000 tonnes of tubers
required for flour production.120
In 2008, the Senegalese government began a project which,
at the first stage, aimed at replacing wheat with 15 percent
locally produced flours, mainly derived of millet and maize. The
government planned to train bakeries and foster millet cultivation so that the share of domestic flours could reach up to 30
percent at later stages.121
119 ��
Christina Lionnet, ‘Pour la ‘décolonisation’ du pain!’, Jeune Afrique, 25
March 2010.
120 ��
ACDIC et al., ‘Zéro produit alimentaire importé au comice’, Livre blanc,
2010.
121 ��
Koffigan E. Adigbli, ‘Bientôt un pain composé de la farine des céréales
Box 2
Decolonising food
Koumba bread in Cameroon
Cameroonian bakers are pressing ahead with the
decolonisation of Africa’s food. They already successfully
proved the feasability of mixing wheat flour with varying
quantities of domestic flours, adding between 10 and 20
percent locally produced ingredients. For the production
of “Koumba” bread and pastry they even use up to 50
percent of sweet potato flour. At a public fair for local
food, consumers confirmed the excellent taste of sweet
potato bread. “I have tasted the pastry. I am told that it
contains 40 percent sweet potato flour and I must admit
that it is exquisite”, said one visitor.122 The Cameroonian
minister of commerce picked up the idea and announced
to start a project examining the options for using
domestic flours.123
locales’, IPS, 18 July 2008.
122 ��
Maurice Oudet, ‘Sweet potato flour – a substitute for wheat?’, ‘Let us
de-colonise our eating habits!’, SEDELAN, Newsletter 403, 3 January 2011, and
Newsletter 404, 8 January 2011.
123 ��
Christina Lionnet, ‘Pour la ‘décolonisation’ du pain!’, Jeune Afrique, 25
March 2010.
45
EPAs: Securing export markets
While African consumer and peasant movements are fighting to
reduce wheat import dependency and “decolonise” their bread,
European cereal trader organisations like COCERAL and Euroflour put pressure on the European Commission to keep open
African markets and to secure the removal of tariff barriers to
EU cereal products by way of bilateral free trade agreements.
Referring to the growing world market, COCERAL, whose national member organisations represent some of largest global
grain traders like Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill,124
demands that “European exporters should be supported in
capitalising this export market potential”. According to the grain
traders’ group, “the CAP after 2013 needs to further support
the competitiveness of agricultural production also through the
dismantling of trade obstacles and barriers”.125
At a Brussels symposium on EU agri-food exports, Euroflour
did not shy away from attacking the already extremely low tariffs on wheat flour in West Africa, which only seldomly exceede
the rate of 20 percent, by calling for an “acceptable import
124 ��
See, for instance, the members list of Germany’s grain trader association
Verein der Getreidehändler (VdG): http://www.vdg-ev.de
125 ��
COCERAL, ‘Position Paper on the Future of the CAP’, Brussels, 24
February 2011.
46
duty not higher than 5%”. Euroflour wants “active support for
the position of the EU flour exporters” in the framework of
the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) currently being
negotiated between the EU and 75 African, Caribbean and
Pacific region countries (ACP). Referring to the reduction of EU
export refunds, the lobby group urged that, as a compensation,
“the Commission needs to defend EU flour exports”.126
The European Commission itself has traditionally lent an ear
to these business demands. Keeping developing countries’
markets open for European food exporters remains a central
aim of its trade policy which is complementing the Common
Agricultural Policy and its generous subsidies. Without low
trade barriers in the South, the EU’s objective of fostering a
food industry capable of conquering world markets would be
unattainable. Domestic support for EU agriculture and external
support by dismantling trade barriers go hand in hand. CAP
subsidies and the EU’s free trade agreements are two sides of
the same coin – inextricably linked to defend the profits of the
European food business.
126 ��
J. Rossy, Euroflour, Presentation, Seminar DG Agri, 25 June 2007,
Brussels.
The EU’s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), in particular, are threatening to constrain ACP countries’ policy space
to protect and develop their agricultural sectors. Of the seven
regional groupings currently negotiating with the EU, so far only
the Caribbean one (Cariforum) concluded a comprehensive
EPA. Some twenty countries concluded “interim” EPAs covering only trade of goods, but with “review clauses” envisaging
the resumption of negotiations at a later date. Yet, the majority
of ACP countries has not joined any interim EPA so far.127
The EU requests the total elimination of tariffs and non-tariff
barriers for at least 80 percent of ACP countries’ product lines
including agricultural commodities. Although the exclusion of
some sensitive goods like cereals is therefore possible, the EU
imposed the inclusion of a so-called “standstill clause” into
most of the interim EPAs prohibiting the introduction of any
new tariffs or the raising of existing tariffs. The interim EPA of
several countries and groupings expands this tariff freeze also
to sensitive goods that have been excluded from liberalisation.
Although Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast and the East African
Community (EAC) excluded cereals from liberalisation, they
127 ��
ODI/ECDPM, ‘The Interim Economic Partnership Agreements between
the EU and African States – Contents, challenges and prospects’, Overseas
Development Institute/European Centre for Development Policy Management,
July 2009.
will not be allowed to raise cereal tariffs anymore due to the
standstill clause.128 To make things worse, safeguard clauses
which could be used to protect the agricultural sector from
import surges are also very weak. Their use is constrained by
onerous conditions and they may only be applied for a limited
period of time.129
The European Commision, however, claims that EU exports
do not pose any threat for agricultural sectors in the South
anymore, because cereals support has been cut since the first
major CAP reforms in 1991, so that the distortion of world
market prices would have largely disappeared. According to
Commission figures, the intervention price for bread wheat, for
instance, declined by 75 percent from 1991 to 2009. The Commission asserts: “EU prices are increasingly driven by world
market prices rather than intervention prices. Intervention has
been reduced or abolished in all sectors.”130 But although the
level of CAP support has indeed decreased over the years, EU
farmers and exporters still benefit from market instruments
128 ��
Ibid.
129 ��
Oxfam, ‘Oxfam International Concerns with Initialled ‘Interim EPA’ texts’,
7 December 2007.
130 ��
European Commission, The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP): on
the move in a changing world – How the EU’s agriculture and development
policies fit together, Luxembourg 2010, p. 12.
47
(intervention buying and export subsidies) as well as direct
payments allowing exports of European wheat products at
dumping prices.
To demonstrate the still enormous magnitude of support,
agricultural analyst Jacques Berthelot calculated the “dumping
rate” of all EU cereals and cereal products exported in 2006,
measured as the ratio of total subsidies to the export value.
In that year, the EU exported 27 million tonnes of raw and
processed cereals as well as cereal-derived products (including
wheat flour, malt, feedstuffs, starch, breads, etc.), equalling 10
percent of its total cereal production. The cereal exports had
a value of €3.58 billion and received subsidies to the tune of
€1.96 billion, corresponding to a dumping rate of 54.7 percent.
Only a minor proportion of total subsidies provided to exported
cereals was made up of export subsidies, about €206 million, with the bulk being direct payments amounting to €1.64
billion.131 Given the tremendous CAP support still awarded to
cereal exporters, it is quite bizarre to claim market distortions
would have disappeared and that developing countries could
therefore open up their markets for EU grain traders without
any risks.
131 ��
Jacques Berthelot, ‘The dumping rate of the EU-27 exported cereals in
2006’, Solidarité, 17 May 2010.
48
4.3 Opening the flood gates: EU milk exports
The vast cereal subsidies provided by the EU benefit not
only cereal exporters but also the EU livestock industry, as
more than half of EU cereal production is used to feed farm
animals. The livestock industry constitutes an important part of
European agribusiness, with meat, milk, eggs and other animal
products representing 40 percent of the total value of EU
farm production in 2009.132 Meat and dairy products combined
account for almost a quarter of all EU food exports.133 The EU
is the world’s second largest dairy and pork exporter and the
third largest poultry exporter, large parts of which end up on
developing countries’ markets.134
Apart from cereal subsidies, the livestock industry also benefitted from direct support measures like intervention prices,
direct payments and export refunds, albeit to different extents
depending on the products in question. Whereas dairy and beef
132 ��
FEFAC, ‘Feed & Food – Statistical Yearbook 2009’, Fédération
Européenne des Fabricants d’Aliments Composée, Brussels.
133 ��
CIAA, ‘Data & trends of the European Food and Drink Industry 2009’,
134 International Dairy Federation, ‘The World Dairy Situation 2010’, Bulletin
of the International Dairy Federation 446/2010, Brussel 2010, p. 27. USDA,
‘Livestock and Poultry: World Markets and Trade’, United States Department of
Agriculture, October 2010.
production belonged to those sectors that have been heavily
supported by the whole range of CAP instruments, pork and
poultry production received somewhat less support. There was
no direct price support linked to poultry or pork, and intervention storage has only seldomly been used. However, both
sectors also benefitted from subsidised cereal inputs, export
refunds and investment aids. Sizeable amounts of investment
aids under CAP’s rural development pillar, for instance, went
into the construction or modernisation of large-scale factory
farms.135
Table 6
Agricultural analyst Jaques Berthelot measured the amount of
CAP subsidies awarded to exported animal products such as
bovine, pig and poultry meat as well as dairy products. Berthelot’s measurement includes market intervention, direct payments, export refunds and subsidised feedstuff. In the period
2006-2008, the EU exported, on average, animals products
worth €12.8 billion per year which received total subsidies of
€4.3 billion (see table 6) The dumping rate of all animal products exported, i.e., the ratio of subsidies to exports, is therefore
about 33.9 percent. In other words, EU animal products sold on
EU-15 exports of animal products, average 2006-2008, in € million
Production
Exports
Export share, %
Subsidies
Dumping rate, %
Dairy Products
40,610
6,249
15.39
2,004
32.07
Bovine Meat
25,699
591
2.30
346
58.55
Pig Meat
25,735
4,709
18.30
1,430
30.37
Poultry Meat
12,279
1,291
10.51
571
44.23
104,323
12,840
12.31
4,351
33.89
Total/Average
Source: Jacques Berthelot, Solidarité 2011
135 ��
Friends of the Earth, ‘Feeding the beast – How public money is propping
up factory farms’, Briefing, April 2009.
49
the world market received, on average, subsidies equalling a
third of their export value. Of the total support, export refunds
played only a minor role as the bulk of support is made up of
domestic subsidies (about 86 percent). For bovine meat exports, the dumping rate is particularly high reaching more than
58 percent. Berthelot’s figures also demonstrate the large EU
oversupply of animal products. Over 10 percent of the European
production of poultry meat, 15 percent of dairy products and 18
percent of pig meat end up on the world market.136
In value terms, dairy products like milk, butter, cheese, cream
or yogurts account for the largest share of European animal
products sold on the world market. Dairy exports are heavily
subsidised and have a profound impact on many developing
countries’ milk sectors. The CAP’s dairy regime consists of
market intervention, direct payments and export subsidies as
well as a system of national milk quotas aimed at limiting dairy
output, supporting producer prices and keeping budgetary
expenses in check. However, a very contested issue of the last
CAP reform, the 2008 Health Check, referred to the phasing
out of the milk quotas envisaged for April 2015.
136 ��
Jaques Berthelot, ‘The EU-15 dumping of animal products on average
from 2006 to 2008’, Solidarité, 15 February 2011.
50
Introduced in 1984, the quota system allotted a maximum
production quantity to each EU member state. If national dairy
production exceeded this quota, a fine – the so-called “superlevy” – had to be paid. The objective of the quota was to limit
the milk oversupply on the EU market that put heavy downward
pressure on the price milk farmers could receive for their
product. Compensating, at least partially, the depressed farm
gate prices of milk producers meant that additional costs had to
be borne by the CAP budget. The quota system succeeded in
lowering the EU’s expenses for dairy market support and kept
at least nominal producer prices more or less stable. However,
taking account of general inflation, producer prices actually fell
between 1984 and the price spike of 2007/08, thereby forcing
many dairy farmers out of the market. In a 2009 report, the
European Court of Auditors underlined the prolonged drop of
milk farmers’ incomes: “Following the introduction of quotas,
the fact that nominal producer prices were maintained masked
the reality that, in real terms, prices suffered a distinct erosion.
Over a long period, milk producers never actually benefited in
real terms from stable prices.”137
137 European Court of Auditors, Have the Management Instruments Applied
to the Market in Milk and Milk Products Achieved Their Main Objectives?,
Special Report No. 14, 2009.
In order to further foster structural adjustment among dairy
farmers and strengthen the international competitiveness of the
dairy industry, in March 2008, the European Council decided
to increase milk quotas by 2 percent – a decision that provoked
angry protests of milk farmers fearing oversupply and price
depression. Farmers’ groups organised milk strikes in several
EU countries such as Germany, Belgium, Italy, France and the
Czech Republic. Yet, in their Health Check decision of November 2008, agriculture ministers maintained this policy despite
all protests and agreed on – what they called – a “soft landing”
for dairy farmers by increasing the milk quotas by 1 percent
over five consecutive years until the expiry of the quota system
in 2015.138 The decision to further increase EU milk supply
exacerbated the commodity price decline caused by the global
financial crisis when worldwide consumer demand collapsed.
Beginning in the second half of 2008, EU producer prices for
milk and milk products underwent a significant decrease due
to the oversupply that continued in 2009 and provoked further
protests.
Then Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel acknowledged the plight of the dairy farmers but claimed that only the
slump in consumer demand was to blame, not the politically
enforced oversupply. She told protesting farmers that “the
reason for the low prices is that consumers are buying less
milk products than they did before, because of the fact that they
are hit as well by the economic crisis.”139 Consequently, the
Commission ignored all proposals by farmers’ groups like the
European Milk Board (EMB) to regulate milk supply.
138 ��
European Commission, ‘Evolution of the market situation and the
consequent conditions for smoothly phasing out the milk quota system’, Report
from the European Commission to the European Parliament and the Council,
COM(2010) 727 final, Brussels, 8 December 2010.
139 Jennifer Rankin, ‘EU to pay dairy farmers early’, European Voice, 26
May 2009.
51
Box 3
Preventing milk lakes
European Milk Board demands flexible adjustment of volumes
Founded in 2006, the European Milk Board (EMB) tries to
organise milk farmers to form a united front against the power
of the highly concentrated dairy industry and food retailers
who are pushing down farm-gate prices to secure cheap milk
supplies. EMB has members in 14 European countries representing about 100,000 milk producers. In contrast to traditional
farmers federations supporting the interests of export-oriented
agribusiness like COPA-COGECA, EMB pleads for reorienting
milk production to primarily satisfy domestic demand and to
avoid surpluses and cheap exports on the world market. To
this end, EMB proposes the creation of a European monitoring
body comprised of producers, processors, policy-makers and
consumers charged with adjusting the milk volumes produced
and with setting a price band allowing a cost-covering remuneration of milk farmers. “Volume control is indispensable”,
according to EMB. The monitoring body would be “an effective
mechanism to prevent surpluses” enabling farmers “to earn a
decent living from their labour”.140
140 European Milk Board, ‘The European Dairy Market – Supply
Management with the Aid of a Monitoring Body’, 21 January 2011. http://www.
europeanmilkboard.org/emb.html
52
Instead of curbing milk supply, the Commission followed the
interests of the dairy industry and food traders. Business representatives like the European Dairy Association EDA lobbied
for the reintroduction of export refunds, which had been set at
zero in June 2007. In January 2009, the Commission bowed
to industry pressure and temporarily reintroduced export subsidies for butter, cheese, whole and skim milk powder thereby
supporting EU dairy traders seeking new export markets given
the depressed EU demand.141
Although export refunds for these products were again cut to
zero by November 2009, this decision underlined the firm commitment of EU policy-makers to support the domestic dairy industry irrespective of the impact on third country producers who
might be pushed off their markets by subsidised EU exports.
Since the temporary reintroduction of export refunds, EU dairy
exports increased considerably, thus exacerbating the plight of
farmers in those countries already suffering from EU dumping
for a long time. In 2010, e.g., the EU-27 increased its skim milk
powder exports by more than 63 percent compared to 2009142,
a growth trend which continued in the first quarter of 2011.143
141 ��
Katy Humphries, ��
‘��
Tensions mount over EU dairy subsidies’, just-food.com,
19 January 2009.
142 ��
AMA, ‘Marktbericht –Milch und Milchprodukte’, AgrarMarkt Austria,
Dezember 2010, 12. Ausgabe, 25 February 2011.
143 ��
AMA, ‘Marktbericht –Milch und Milchprodukte’, AgrarMarkt Austria, März
2011, 3. Ausgabe, 24 May 2011.
Swamping African markets
Since milk is a perishable product, only 7 percent of world dairy
production is traded internationally. The main products traded
on the global market include dry milk powders, cheese and
butter, with milk powders having the largest share of production traded. The EU is the second largest dairy exporter behind
New Zealand covering 24 percent of world dairy exports.144 Of
these, more than two thirds flow to developing countries and a
quarter to Africa.145 Regarding milk powder, Africa is the main
destination for European exporters, absorbing half of all extraEU sales of skim milk powder, with Algeria, Nigeria and Egypt
as the largest markets.146 Sub-Sahara Africa’s share of EU milk
powder exports rose steadily in the last decade outstripping all
other developing regions as the main destination.147
The subsidised dairy exports affect developing country producers in three ways: by lowering the world market price and producers’ incomes, by kicking developing country exporters out
of the International Dairy Federation 446/2010, Brussel 2010, p. 27.
145 ��
Oxfam Deutschland, ‘Hintergrundinfos EU-Milch-Politik’, 2/2009.
of the International Dairy Federation 446/2010, Brussel 2010, p. 32.
147 ��
Aline Mosnier, ‘Réformes de la PAC et présence européenne sur les
marchés des PED’, CERDI-CNRS, June 2008.
of third country markets, and by disrupting local markets in the
South. EU dairy exports to African countries have a particular
severe impact as they impede the development of local dairy
industries which could be an important means for the improvement of livelihoods of millions of poor livestock farmers.
The number of people potentially affected by European milk
dumping is huge. It is estimated that some 12-14 percent of
the world population, or 750 to 900 million people, live in dairy
farming households, the large majority impoverished small farmers. Given the rapidly growing milk demand in the developing
world – annual growth rates averaged 3.5 to 4 percent between
1995 and 2005 –, the dairy sector could be a powerful tool for
poverty reduction if this demand would be met by sourcing fresh
milk from local small farmers.148 A recent FAO report underlines
that “small-scale milk production not only improves the food
security of milk producing households but also helps to create
numerous employment opportunities throughout the entire dairy
chain, i.e. for small-scale rural processors and intermediaries.”149
If the growing global milk demand of 15 million tonnes per year
would be met by smallholders, 3 million jobs could be created in
primary production alone, according to this report.
148 ��
FAO, Status of and Prospects for Smallholder Milk Production – A Global
Perspective, by T. Hemme and J. Otte, Rome 2010, p. 160-162.
149 ��
Ibid., p. 160.
53
Among the many impediments for small farmer’s milk production (under-investment, lacking government support), FAO
stresses first and foremost the “massive policy interventions
(price support, milk quotas, direct payments, investment
support programmes, export subsidies, etc.) in developed
countries” that are creating a competitive advantage for rich
countries’ milk producers. “This penalises dairy farmers in
developing countries, where governments cannot afford to
provide such policy support.” FAO also warns that “trade
liberalisation increasingly exposes smallholder dairy farmers to
competition from large-scale corporate dairy enterprises”.150
All these threats materialised in Africa, where, beginning
in the 1980s, structural adjustment programmes and trade
liberalisation led to growing dairy imports, 70 percent of which
originating in the European Union.151 These imports include milk
powders, condensed milk, butter, yogurts and cheeses, with
a strong prevalence of subsidised milk powders. Many dairy
and food processors in Africa use cheap imported milk powder
instead of raw milk of local farmers to recombine it into liquid
milk for the production of milk, yogurts, butter, cheese and ice
cream. In addition, milk powder also serves as a substitute for
150 ��
Ibid., p. 161.
151 ��
CTA, Agritrade News, Dairy sector, http://agritrade.cta.int/en/content/
view/full/265/offset/60
54
local fresh milk at the final consumer level. This substitution is
enhanced by the easy use and long shelf-life of powdered milk
(up to six months for whole milk powder and three years for
skim milk powder).
Brands of the top European dairy processors (see table 7)
dominate African markets. European products sold in African
countries include milk powder produced by Nestlé (brand
name “Nido”) and FrieslandCampina (brand name “Peak”),
condensed and evaporated milk by FrieslandCampina (“Bonnet Rouge”, “Three Crowns”), butter and cheese by Lactalis
(“Bridel”, “Président”) and Parmalat (“Parmalat”, “Bonnita”)
as well as yogurts by Groupe Danone (“Danone”) and Sodiaal
(“Yoplait”).152
The sales of European dairy products in African countries are
also closely linked to the expansion of supermarkets advancing
not only in urban centres but also in rural areas. In Cameroon,
e.g., supermarkets opening up in rural areas and offering
tins of European milk powder and condensed milk effectively
undermined attempts to establish a market for locally produced
152 ��
ACDIC (Association citoyenne de défense des intérêts collectifs), ‘Filière
laitière au Cameroun’, Collectif Alimenterre (CFSI, SOS Faim), June 2006.
Maurice Odet, ‘La révolution blanche est-elle possible au Burkina Faso, et plus
largement en Afrique de l’Ouest?’, Misereor, July 2005, Aachen.
Table 7
Top European Dairy Processors
Company
Country
Turnover, in billion €
Nestlé S.A.
Switzerland
16.9
Groupe Danone
France
9.2
Groupe Lactalis
France
9.2
Royal FrieslandCampina N.V.
Netherlands
9.1
Arla Foods amba
Denmark
6.4
Parmalat Finanziaria S.p.A.
Italy
3.6
Bongrain S.A.
France
3.4
Groupe Sodiaal
France
2.8
Dairy Farmers of America Inc.
USA
2.3
Nordmilch AG
Germany
2.3
Theo Müller GmbH & Co. KG.
Germany
2.2
Humana Milchunion e.G.
Germany
2.2
Tine BA
Norway
2.0
Groupe Bel
France
2.0
Glanbia plc
Ireland
1.8
Source: Baking + Biscuit, Issue 4, 2009, p. 32
55
fresh milk.153 Similarly, South African supermarket chains like
Shoprite expanding into neighbouring countries such as Namibia, Botswana or Zambia also serve as distribution channels
for European dairy products as well as South African products
derived of EU milk powder.154
The growing use of imported dairy products is a tragedy, given
the large unexploited milk potential of many African countries
with favourable climates for cattle breeding and the large
herds of poor pastoralists and sedentary small farmers whose
comparatively low milk output could be improved with relatively
few resources.155 Traditional systems of milk production never
received adequate support to use their enormous potential for
poverty reduction and food security. For instance, the systems of
pastoralists like Maasai in Kenya and Tansania, Borana in Ethiopia, Tuareg and Fulani in West Africa have long been neglected by
governments and development agencies although they contribute
large parts of milk production in their respective countries.156
153 ��
Brot für die Welt, EED, ‘Milk Dumping in Cameroon‘, Facts 02, Stuttgart,
Bonn, 10/2009.
154 ��
Germanwatch/FIAN/Both Ends/UK Food Group, ‘Consequences of the
EU Trade and Agriculture Policy for Zambia’s Dairy Farmers’, October 2009.
155 ��
SOS Faim, ‘Milk production in the framework of globalisation’, Farming
dynamics, Number 13, December 2006.
156 ��
IIED, SOS Sahel, Modern and mobile – The future of livestock production
in Africa’s drylands, 2010.
56
Cattle herders could also count on sufficient domestic demand.
In the period 1990-2004, the demand for milk and dairy products in Africa was growing at an average rate of 4 percent per
year, while production grew at only 3.1 percent. Unfortunately,
a sizable part of the growing gap between production and
consumption is now being filled with dairy imports, large parts
of which supplied by the European dairy industry.157
Milk powder in Cameroon
In Cameroon, the traditional pastoralist sector with its local
races of grass-fed cows dominates national milk production,
while modern industrial farms using more productive breeds
and feed complements only contribute 2 percent to total domestic production. Pastoralists, mainly belonging to the seminomadic Fulani tribe, own 75 percent of the 6 million heads of
cattle, 20 percent of which are used as milk cows.158Although
Fulani cows’ milk yield is very low (only 1-3 litres per day compared to 35-40 litres for highly productive European races),
they account for 90 percent of Cameroon’s milk output and
157 ��
O. A. Ndambi, T. Hemme, U. Latacz-Lohmann, ‘Dairying in Africa – Status
and recent developments’, Livestock Research for Rural Development, Volume
19, Article 111, 2007.
158 ��
provide poor Fulani families with valuable additional incomes.159
While cattle herding is mainly done by men, women are generally concerned with milking, processing, selling the milk on local
markets and controlling the money earned by milk sales.160
But European milk powder exports are constantly undermining
the possibilities to further develop the Cameroonian dairy sector and provide local cattle breeders with desperately needed
incomes. Between 1996 and 2003, dairy imports rose by 120
percent, almost two thirds of which in the form of milk powder.
At least 75 percent of the imports originate in the EU, with
Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and France the main suppliers.161 Nowadays, 40 to 50 percent of milk supply in Cameroon
is covered by imports putting a heavy burden on the countries’
food import bill. In the period 1996-2006, Cameroon spent
€334 million in foreign currency on dairy imports.162
159 ��
Bonn, 10/2009.
160 ��
O. A. Ndambi, I. Tchouamo, P. H. Bayemi, T. Hemme, ‘Milk production
amongst Fulani grazers in the Western highlands of Cameroon: Constraints and
development perspectives’, Livestock Research for Rural Development, Volume
20, Article 13, 2008.
161 ��
162 ��
Bonn, 10/2009.
Milk made of milk powder has generally been far cheaper than
the raw milk of local farmers or Fulani herders. In Cameroon,
the price of milk made from powder amounts to €0.34,
whereas a litre of raw milk supplied to the dairies costs €0.45
in the rainy season and €0.61 in the dry season. Milk supply
decreases during the dry season because of lower availability
of pasture grass and pastoralists moving their herds to grazing
grounds further away from urban centres. Due to the large
price disparity, most dairies operating in Cameroon – smallscale cooperatives as well as larger-scale dairies – almost
exclusively use imported milk powder, thus depriving tens of
thousands of poor farmers of a possible outlet for their raw
milk. It is estimated that 200,000 persons are working in rural
milk farming. After families’ self-consumption, the farmers sell
about half of their milk on local markets.163
The temporary reintroduction of EU export subsidies in 2009
to dispose of European milk surpluses further exacerbated
the situation of Cameroon’s dairy farmers as they contributed
to a considerable decline of milk powder prices. Beginning of
2008, the price of a kilogram of imported milk powder was
€3.40 on the Cameroonian market; but by summer 2009, it had
been fallen to approximately €1.60. Given the extreme price
163 ��
57
volatility and continuing dumping exports, it is merely impossible to create a viable dairy industry based on local fresh milk
supplies. Tilder Kumichii of ACDIC (Association for the Defense
of Citizen’s Interest) rightly said that the “EU export subsidies
(…) send a clear message to all domestic investors to keep out
of the dairy economy and let the world market profit from the
huge opportunities offered by the Cameroon dairy market.”164
EU dumping also contributes to the failure of developing projects aimed at strengthening the domestic dairy chain in African
countries. In
��
the last two decades, several projects tried to establish dairies using local raw milk, but many of them collapsed
because of irregular milk supply, inadequate infrastructure and
the unfettered competition of cheap imports. Even private dairies trying to process at least a small share of locally produced
raw milk along with milk powder face enormous difficulties to
survive.
milk powder, penetrated Sotramilk’s regional market in NorthWest Cameroon with cheap yoghurts. Sotramilk first tried
to defend its market position and lowered its yoghurt prices
by reducing the share of local milk to 5-10 percent. In 2008,
however, the dairy could no longer withstand the pressure
and had to close down. “The final closure is a catastrophe for
us dairy farmers”, says Wajiri Ndanerie, a farmer who supplied Sotramilk. “But we couldn’t sell our milk any cheaper to
Sotramilk. We have to feed our cows, we invested in stalls, we
have to supply the milk in perfect condition to the dairy. That
costs us an enormous amount of money.”165
Sotramilk, e.g., a dairy founded 1993 in Bameda in the NorthWest of Cameroon, used a proportion of 20 percent of local
milk for its yoghurt and cheese production, but could not face
up to price competition of Camlait, Cameroon’s main largescale dairy. Camlait, which exclusively uses cheap European
164 ��
Bonn, 10/2009, p. 7.
58
165 ��
Ibid., p.2.
Box 4
Recapturing domestic markets
Fulani women create mini-dairies in Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso’s farmers equally suffered from milk imports
flooding the local market, with more than half originating in
the EU. Total dairy imports occupy about half of the domestic
market. In Burkina Faso’s large cities like Ouagadougou or
Bobo-Dioulasso, the population almost exclusively consumes
imported milk products depriving more than one million traditional cattle breeders, many belonging to the Fulani, of an outlet
for their milk.166
right to engage in selling other food products. They live on milk
and from milk.” Gariko’s mini-dairy also suffered from EU milk
dumping: “We have to cope with the competition from such
milk. It arrives here at a selling price of €0.30 a litre, whereas
we have to sell ours for €0.45.” As a result, the women must
reduce their profit margin to a minimum to be able to sell their
yoghurt and milk.167
However, several Burkinabe cattle breeders were no longer
willing to accept their market exclusion and created their own
mini-dairies to process and sell their milk. In 2002, Korotoumou
Gariko, a Fulani woman owning a small herd of cows, set up a
network of women cattle breeders and founded one of the first
“female” mini-dairies in Burkina Faso to process raw milk into
yoghurt and pasteurised milk. For Fulani women, milk is the
only source of income, as Gariko explains: “Contrary to other
ethnic groups in Burkina, Fulani women do not have the
To better defend the interests of local herders and milk producers, Gariko’s business was among 23 Burkinabe mini-dairies
who, in 2007, created the ‘National Union of Mini-Dairies and
Producers of Local Milk’. Members are required to exclusively
process local milk supplied by small farmers like the Fulani
herders. To market its products, the federation created its own
label BurkinaLait. The strenghtening of local dairy chains and
the fight against unfair competition from imported milk powder
are among its main objectives. Korotoumou Gariko was elected
as first president of the milk federation.168
166 ��
Maurice Oudet, ‘La révolution blanche est-elle possible au Burkina Faso,
et plus largement en Afrique de l’Ouest?’, Misereor, July 2005, Aachen.
167 ��
Frédéric Janssens, ‘If we cannot sell our milk, we are finished!’, 13 July
2007, www.abcburkina.net
168 ��
See: http://www.burkinalait.org
59
Free trade and the fight against import surges
While African cattle breeders and milk farmers try to protect
their markets from subsidised imports (see box 4), the EU’s
free trade agreements still support the offensive interests of
European dairy exporters. The Economic Partnership Agreements, e.g., threaten to undermine efforts to develop viable
domestic dairy sectors on the African continent, as the analysis
of some of the interim EPAs demonstrates.
Of the eight countries comprising the Economic and Monetary
Community of Central Africa CEMAC, Cameroon is the only one
having signed an interim EPA so far. On imports, Cameroon applies CEMAC’s common external tariff which ranges between 5
and 30 percent depending on the processing level of the goods.
While the CEMAC tariff on dairy products for final consumption
such as yogurts, cheese and butter is 30 percent, the tariff for
milk powder is at a very low rate of only 5 percent, according
to the EU-Cameroon interim EPA.169 Cameroon included dairy
products into its list of products exempt from liberalisation.170
169 ��
‘Interim Agreement with a view to an Economic Partnership Agreement
between the European Community and its Member States, of the one part, and
the Central Africa Party, of the other part’, Official Journal of the European
Union, 28.2.2009, L57/2-L57/360.
170 ��
ODI/ECDPM, ‘The new EPAs: comparative analysis of their content and
60
However, the EPA’s standstill clause in Article 21(2) covering all
tariff lines stipulates that no new customs duties shall be introduced, nor the existing ones increased. Thus, given the very
low tariff rate of 5 percent on milk powder, it will be merely
impossible to create a level playing field for Cameroonian dairy
producers vis-à-vis European exporters.
Of the 15 member ECOWAS group (Economic Community of
West African States), only two, Ivory Coast and Ghana, have
signed an interim EPA with the EU. Both countries’ accord also
contains the highly restrictive standstill clause (in both cases in
Article 16).171 If this clause would equally be introduced into an
EPA covering the whole ECOWAS group, all its member states
would lose the ability to raise their tariff levels on dairy imports.
This would clearly be bad news for cattle herders and minidairies in Burkina Faso fighting against dumping imports of
European milk powder. As in Cameroon, the Burkinabe tariff on
milk powder is only 5 percent – far too low to offset the price
challenges for 2008’, Overseas Development Institute/European Centre for
Development Policy Management, 31 March 2008, p 12.
171 ��
‘Stepping Stone Economic Partnership Agreement between Ghana, of
the one part, and the European Community and its Member States, of the other
part’. ‘Stepping Stone Economic Partnership Agreement between Côte d’Ivoire,
of the one part, and the European Community and its Member States, of the
other part’, Official Journal of the European Union, 3.3.2009, L59/3-L59/273.
advantage of milk made of imported powder.172
Together with other West African farmer’s organisations, Koro��
toumou Gariko of Burkina Faso’s National Union of Mini-Dairies
and Producers of Local Milk is campaigning for higher import
tariffs: “It is absolutely necessary that we protect local production. If milk is imported, it must contribute somehow to help
local production by means of higher import duties. For us it is
not just a case of defending our interests, it is about defending
our lives!”173 No wonder then that Gariko outrightly condemns
the EU’s Economic Partnership Agreements: “To safeguard
food sovereignty, it is necessary to protect ourselves. But what
we face, in particular with the Economic Partnership Agreements, is simply the extinction of smale scale farming. (...) The
EPAs fight the poor, not poverty.”174
Due to the EPAs’ liberalisation commitments, particularly the
highly restrictive standstill clause, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory
172 ��
Maurice Oudet, ‘L’impact de la libéralisation sur les agriculteurs de
l’Afrique Occidentale (CEDEAO) et les Accords de Partenariat Economique
(APE)’, Réseau Afrique-Europe Foi et Justice (AEFJN), SEDELAN, January
2009.
173 ��
Frédéric Janssens, ‘If we cannot sell our milk, we are finished!’, 13 July
2007, www.abcburkina.net
174 ��
Ibid.
Coast and possibly many other African countries will be unable
to raise its dairy tariffs in the future, thus losing an important
means to protect and develop viable domestic milk sectors.
However, retaining the flexibility to choose an adequate level of
tariff protection proved to be very helpful in the cases of Kenya
and India.
Kenya’s dairy sector is largely based on 625,000 smallholders accounting for 70 percent of total annual milk output.175
After the liberalisation of its dairy sector in the 1990s, Kenya
experienced huge import surges of dry milk powders and
other dairy products in the period 1990-2002 which depressed the fresh milk demand of dairies and considerably
lowered the amounts of national milk production. Milk powder imports rose from 48 tonnes in 1990 to 2,500 tonnes
by the end of the decade. In fresh milk equivalent, this presented an increase from 400,000 litres to 21 million litres.
The imports triggered a price drop and local production fell
by nearly 70 percent.176 Small farmers who were deprived of
an outlet for their raw milk suffered from reduced incomes
and increased poverty levels. A survey among Kenyan dairy
175 ��
Rosemary Atieno, Karuti Kanyinga, ‘The Politics of Policy Reforms in
Kenya’s Dairy Sector’, Future Agriculture, Policy Brief 19, February 2008.
176 ��
Aileen Kwa, ‘EU Set to Milk Africa With Subsidised Goods?’, IPS, Nairobi,
15 November 2007.
61
farmers found that 63 percent of households recorded
decreased incomes, 56 percent were forced to reduce
investments and 47 had to cut back on expenses for their
children’s education like schools fees or purchase of educational material.177
The imports mainly originating in the EU provoked an outcry
of concerned dairy farmers and convinced the government to
increase its applied tariff on imported dairy products from 35
to 60 percent in early 2002.178 This move was compliant with
Kenyas WTO obligations, because the new tariff rate was within
Kenyas bound tariff ceiling of 100 percent for agricultural commodities. The difference between the rate actually applied and
the one bound in the WTO allowed for an increase in case of
market distortions.179
177 ��
Tom R. Wambua, Fred Miencha, ‘An Analysis of the Impact of Import
Surges on Rural Poverty in Kenya: The Case of the Dairy Sub-sector’, Study for
Action Aid International Kenya, June 2007.
178 ��
Ibid.
179 ��
Bound tariffs are specific commitments made by WTO member states.
The bound tariff is the maximum tariff rate which may potentially be levied
on the import of a given good. To allow for adjustments, bound tariffs are
generally higher than the rates actually applied. If WTO members raise applied
tariffs above the bound levels, other members can initiate a dispute settlement
procedure at the WTO.
62
A major outcome of the Kenyan tariff increase was a marked
decline of milk powder imports from 2002 onwards, so that
local fresh milk could again be marketed competitively on the
domestic market. The government action was accompanied by
a revival of the state-controlled dairy production and marketing
firm Kenya Co-operatives Creameries Limited (KCC), which
had virtually collapsed after the liberalisation of the dairy sector
and the influx of private milk processors on the Kenyan market.
Before liberalisation, KCC was obliged to accept all milk deliveries of farmers to its processing plans. To fulfill its mandate,
KCC had established a nationwide network of milk collection,
cooling and processing facilities. This state-controlled marketing system provided Kenyan milk farmers with a reliable outlet
for their produce and cushioned them from price fluctuations of
the free market.180
The reinforcement of KCC (now called New KCC) through an
improved management structure and the 2002 tariff increase
contributed to a marked increase of the amounts of locally
produced and processed dairy products in Kenya in the following years. Thanks to its own milk powder processing facility,
the New KCC was even able to cope with large quantities of
180 ��
Tom R. Wambua, Fred Miencha, ‘An Analysis of the Impact of Import
Surges on Rural Poverty in Kenya: The Case of the Dairy Sub-sector’, Study for
Action Aid International Kenya, June 2007.
raw milk deliveries by small farmers’ cooperatives. The Future
Agriculture Consortium, a network of researchers from British
and African institutions, hails the success of these reforms:
“There has been a dramatic revival of the KCC, the dairy sector
in general and the fortunes of smallholder dairy producers in
particular. (...) Nationally, milk processing has risen from 173
million litres in 2002 to 332 million litres in 2005. KCC’s daily
milk intake increased ten-fold, from 40,000 litres per day in
2002 to 400,000 litres per day in 2006. The revival of dairy
cooperatives has stimulated the development of new businesses such as feed suppliers and providers of artificial insemination, veterinary, breeding and financial services.”181
Similarly, in the years 1999 and 2000, India’s dairy sector
experienced import floods of European skim milk powder
after the tariff on milk powder had been set at zero as part of
the liberalisation commitments agreed upon during the GATT
Uruguay-Round that led to the creation of the WTO. Indian
dairy producers complained that they could not compete with
subsidised EU milk powder and the government subsequently
renegotiated the bound zero-duty and, in 2000, introduced a
tariff rate quota on dry milk which is regularly adapted accord181 ��
Rosemary Atieno, Karuti Kanyinga, ‘The Politics of Policy Reforms in
Kenya’s Dairy Sector’, Future Agriculture, Policy Brief 19, February 2008, pp.
4-5.
ing to the needs of the domestic market. In 2004, the tariff rate
quota on skim milk powder and whole milk powder allowed
imports of up to 10,000 tonnes at a customs duty of 15 percent,
while quantities outside this quota were charged 60 percent.182
In the following years, the Indian government adapted the
import regime by reducing the in-quota tariff to 5 percent.
In March 2010, the government further liberalised the trade
regime by permitting zero-duty in-quota imports of 30,000
tonnes of milk powder, while the 60 percent outside-quota
tariff remained unchanged.183 Despite recent liberalisations, the
introduction of the quota system drove dairy imports down and
helped keeping the domestic milk sector alive.184 The flexible
adaptations of the import quota protected the achievements
of India’s very succesful national dairy programme Operation
Flood which, in several phases between 1970 and 1996, created a vibrant domestic dairy chain by linking a vast network
of small farmers’ milk cooperatives with consumers. Due to
182 ��
K.G. Karmakar, G.D. Banerjee, ‘Opportunities and Challenges in the
Indian Dairy Industry’, Technical Digest, Issue 9, 2006, pp. 24-27.
183 ��
USDA, ‘India – Dairy and Products Annual 2011’, GAIN Report Number
IN1112, 12 January 2011.
184 ��
Bhaskar Goswami, ‘Can Indian Dairy Cooperatives Survive in the New
Economic Order?’, Forum for Biotechnology & Food Security, Paper presented
at the WTO Public Forum 2007, 4-5 October 2007, Geneva.
63
this programme, India tripled its milk output, achieved selfsufficiency, and even turned into a milk exporter. According to
the International Food Policy Research Institute IFPRI, one of
the key lessons of Operation Flood was that production can
be increased by “restricting key imports so as not to disrupt
domestic markets”.185
However, the negotiations of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA)
between India and the European Union, which started in June
2007, are now renewing fears among Indian milk farmers.
Negotiators of both sides have already agreed that the FTA will
eliminate tariffs on at least 90 percent of all tradable goods.
They are currently discussing the extension of this figure
and the negative lists of goods which might be exempt from
liberalisation. A key EU demand is the elimination of, inter alia,
dairy products from India’s negative list. According to media
reports, the Indian governement seems to be amenable to this
request.186 The EU food industry fiercely lobbied for the FTA to
dismantle India’s dairy tariffs. While Eucolait, the European Association of Dairy Trade, complained about the “protected mar185 ��
Kenda Cunningham, ‘Rural and Urban Linkages – Operation Flood’s Role
in India’s Dairy Development’, International Food Policy Research Institute,
IFPRI Discussion Paper 00924, November 2009.
186 ��
Pallavi Aiyar, ‘India, EU take another step towards FTA’, Business
Standard, 25 September 2010.
64
ket” in India187, the European Dairy Association EDA denounced
that “unrealistic high import tariffs prevent any substantial
imports”.188 Both associations urged that the FTA should secure
improved market access for EU dairy exporters.
But following these European industry demands would pose
serious risks for millions of Indian small farmers. The Indian
dairy sector provides employment for 90 million people, 75
million of which are women. The large majority are small farmers either owning less than two hectares of land or being landless. These small farmers own 75 percent of India’s livestock,
including tens of millions of milk cows. Dairy products, which
account for 70 percent of the output of the livestock sector,
contribute a third of the gross income of rural households and
almost a half of the income of landless families. Dairy farming
is thus regarded as “one of the most pro-poor sectors” of
India.189
187 ��
Jack Baines, ‘Dairy Trade Offensive Interests’, Eucolait, Presentation,
25 June 2007.
188 ��
Rik Lodders, ‘Consultation on EU Agri-Food Export Interests’, European
Dairy Association (EDA), Presentation, Brussels, 25 June 2007.
189 ��
Bhaskar Goswami, ‘Can Indian Dairy Cooperatives Survive in the New
Economic Order?’, Forum for Biotechnology & Food Security, Paper presented
at the WTO Public Forum 2007, 4-5 October 2007, Geneva.
Several Indian sector representatives voiced their concerns on
the EU-India FTA. The Indian Dairy Association, uniting cooperatives, the public and the private sector, claimed that opening
up the market without adequate protection would result in
“highly uneven competition on unequal terms, disrupting the
lives and livelihoods of small and marginal Indian farmers”.190
Similarly, the Indian Coordinating Committee of Farmers Movements denounced that the “EU-India FTA will inevitably be an
unfair deal because nothing will be done about EU subsidies;
while our duties will be drastically cut.” The farmers movements also raised their concern that the negative list currently
exempting certain dairy products “will be further negotiated
and reduced”.191
4.4 Europe plucks Africa: EU poultry exports
The EU’s poultry meat production, large part of which is
being exported, also caused severe disruptions on developing countries’ markets. Benefitting from CAP support in the
form of investment aids, trade promotion, export refunds and
subsidised cereal prices lowering feedstuff costs, EU poultry
farms conquered one third of the global poultry market. Cereal
subsidies were particularly helpful for global expansion because
feedstuffs contribute up to 70 percent of the production costs
of poultry farms.192 In the period 1990-2009, European poultry
exports grew by a staggering 130 percent, with chicken meat
contributing 80 percent of total shipments. The Netherlands
dominate the EU’s chicken meat exports with a share of 29
percent, followed by France, Belgium, the UK and Germany.193
Sub-Sahara Africa ranks high among the main export destinations absorbing between 20 and 25 percent of EU poultry
sales.194
192 ��
FAO, ‘Agribusiness Handbook – Poultry, Meat & Eggs’, Rome 2010.
190 ��
N R Bhasin, President’s Desk, Indian Dairyman Magazine, May 2010
Issue, Vol 62, No. 5.
191 ��
Indian Coordinating Committee of Farmers Movements, ‘India’s Farmer
Organisations oppose EU-India FTA’, letter to Prime Minister Shri Manmohan
Singh, 28 April 2010.
193 ��
Hans-Wilhelm Windhorst, ‘Patterns and Dynamics of global and EU
poultry meat production and trade’, Lohmann Information, Vol 46 (1), April 2011,
pp. 28-37.
194 ��
FranceAgriMer, ‘Le marché des produits avicole dans l’Union
Européenne‘, 2009.
65
Beginning in the mid-1990s, West and Central African countries
suffered from huge import surges of chicken meat, the majority
of which originated in the EU. Prior to that time, chicken imports were almost insignificant in the region (see chart 9). EU
shipments to countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Cameroon or Benin quadrupled between 1996 and 2006 disrupting
the market for thousands of people breeding chickens in their
backyards, on small-scale poultry farms or on a few semiindustrial farms in urban and suburban areas. EU exports to
Africa consist mainly of frozen chicken pieces like wings, legs,
necks and giblets. The growing trade with these minor broiler
parts is a result of changing consumption patterns in Europe,
where consumer preference switched from red meat like beef
to the supposedly healthier white meat of poultry with its lower
fat content. In addition, consumers increasingly preferred to
buy easy to prepare fresh chicken pieces, particularly chicken
breast, instead of whole birds. Due to these changes, the
poultry industry makes high profits with breast meat in Europe
allowing to sell all other chicken parts at extremely low prices
on African markets.195
The imports had devastating effects particularly on West African smallholders who were unable to compete with dumping
195 ��
EED, ACDIC, ICCO, APRODEV, ‘No more chicken, please’, November
2007.
66
prices of European chicken cuts. Small-scale poultry farming is
very widespread in West African rural and suburban areas, as
poultry and egg production serves as an important complementary source of nutrition and income for millions of poor households. The semi-industrial poultry sector, which previously
experienced a rapid growth particularly in the coastal countries
like Senegal or Ivory Coast, also suffered from the import floods
as many newly created businesses were forced to close down.
The influx of EU chicken was also an effect of West African
regional integration and the application of a Common External
Tariff (CET) in many countries. The eight members of the West
African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), which also
belong to the larger Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS), introduced the CET in 2000, the remaining
ECOWAS members followed in 2005. Under the CET, the import tariff on final consumer goods including poultry meat was
set at a very low level of 20 percent, implying a significant tariff
reduction in most countries.196
Large parts of Ghana’s poultry sector have virtually been wiped
out by dumping imports that started in the late 1990s. Imports
of frozen chicken backs, necks, rumps and wingtips originating
196 ��
Kate Schneider, Robert Plotnick, ‘Poultry Market in West Africa: Overview
& Comparative Analysis’, Evans School Policy Analysis and Research, EPAR
Brief No. 82, 16 July 2010.
Chart 9 Poultry meat exports to West Africa 1996-2006
67
in the EU increased by 476 percent between 2000 and 2009.197
In previous decades, Ghana’s government promoted the domestic poultry sector to address the shortfall in animal protein.
During the 1980s and 1990s, local production grew rapidly until
it provided 95 percent of domestic demand of chicken meat
and eggs. However, due to the import surge and dwindling
state support, the sector experienced a steep decline and, in
2008, it could merely supply 10 percent of local demand. “Most
of the small and medium-scale producers have completely
closed down”, confirms a report of the US Department of
Agriculture.198
68
my birds.” Today, farmers would have to “run after the market
women” to sell their chicken.199 The lost incomes increase the
vulnerability of chicken farmers’ families to poverty and hunger,
as Marc Akamenko and Francis Mac Tengey, two other members of the Tema association, confirm. Whereas Akamenko’s
family had to reduce the quantity and quality of food consumed,
Mac Tengey’s family could only afford two meals per day.200
The imported chicken meat was sold at €1.50 against €2.60 for
local chicken. Small-scale poultry farmers who could no longer
compete either gave up or switched to breeding laying hens
for the sale of eggs. William Quashie, a member of the Tema
Chicken Farmers Association in Ashaiman, a suburb of Ghana’s
capital Accra, complains: “The chicken parts are cheaper than
my birds. Whenever there were chicken parts on the market,
the market women came only half as often as usually to buy
In Cameroon, where poultry meat shipments from the EU
surged from 820 tonnes in 1996 to almost 19,000 tonnes in
2004, the imported meat only cost €1.44 per kilo compared
to €2.40 for local chicken. To measure the economic impact
of these dumping prices, the NGO ACDIC (Association for the
Defense of Citizen’s Interest) selected a random sample of 100
poultry farmers operating in 1996. Six years later, only eight
were still in business. Not only breeders lost their jobs but also
farmers providing feed and butchers who were slaughtering,
plucking and selling chickens on local markets. According to
ACDIC estimates, 120.000 jobs disappeared along the whole
production chain during the crisis.201
197 ��
Katherine Killebrew, Mary Kay Gugerty, Robert Plotnick, ‘Poultry Market
in West Africa: Ghana’, Evans School Policy Analysis and Research, EPAR Brief
No. 83, 28 May 2010.
199 ��
Cited in: Mohammed Issah, ‘Right to food of tomato and poultry farmers
– Report of an investigative mission to Ghana’, FIAN, Send Foundation, Both
Ends, Germanwatch, UK Food Group, November 2007, p. 18.
198 ��
USDA, ‘Ghana – Poultry and Products Annual 2008’, USDA Foreign
Agricultural Service, GAIN Report, 28 August 2008.
200 ��
Ibid.
201 ��
Ibid.
Box 5
“I lost everything”
Margaret Nkume: a chicken farmer in Cameroon
Margaret Nkume, a mother of four children, belonged to
the many women among Cameroon’s poultry farmers
who lost their income due to the import shock. “My
poultry farm was very succesful when I started it in
1995. I invested €106 to rear 100 chickens in two months
and I managed to sell them for €230, which was good
business at that time. That encouraged me to expand
my production and I took out a loan. (…) In 2002, I took
out another loan to increase my income. But by then,
ever more frozen chicken was appearing on the market
at very, very low prices. My customers bought this
cheap meat. I could no longer sell what I produced and
lost everything. My children can no longer go to school
regularly because we can’t afford the school fees.”202
Like Margaret Nkume, many poultry farmers not only
lost their income but also accumulated debts because of
the inability to repay the loans they took out to start their
small chicken businesses.
202 ��
Cited in: EED, ACDIC, ICCO, APRODEV, ‘No more chicken, please’,
November 2007, p.6.
In Senegal, frozen chicken imports rose from 500 tonnes in
1996 to 16,600 tonnes in 2002, with over 70 percent originating in the EU. Only a minor fraction was made up of whole
birds, whilst chicken pieces accounted for 86 percent of total
deliveries. Regarding the low cost of EU chicken cuts, a tradesman in Senegal’s capital Dakar told that “some suppliers are
even offering products virtually at zero prices”.203 The large
price range – imported meat cost less than €1.50 per kilo
against €2.30 per kilo for domestic one – affected small and
larger poultry farms alike.204 In the period 2001-2003, the semiindustrial broiler production in suburban areas decreased by 30
percent causing a loss of between 1,500 and 2,000 jobs.205 The
impact on small farmers was even more significant. Senegals
poultry producers federation FAFA (Fédération des Acteurs de
la Filière Avicole) estimated that 70 percent of poultry farms
had to close down because of the dumping effect. The application of WAEMU’s Common External Tariff (CET) in 2000 facili203 ��
Cited in: Guillaume Duteurtre, Pape Nouhine Dièye, Djiby Dia, ‘L’impact
des importations de volailles et de produits laitiers sur la production locale
au Sénégal’, Institute sénégalais de recherces agricoles (ISRA), Etudes et
documents, Vol. 8, No 1, 2005, p. 24.
204 ��
SOS Faim et al., ‘Chicken Exports: Europe plucks Africa! – A campaign
for the right to protect agricultural markets’, 2004.
205 ��
Denis Horman, ‘Chicken Connection – Le poulet africain étouffé par
l’Europe’, Groupe de Recherche pour une Stratégie économique alternative’
(GRESEA), Octobre 2004.
69
tated the import flood. Due to the CET, the Senegalese import
tariff on poultry dropped from 55 to 20 percent.206
Risking public health
The imports of frozen chicken parts not only cause economic
disruptions but also severe health risks for African consumers
due to the absence of reliable cold chains in many countries.
Whereas local chickens are mainly sold alive, which is the most
hygienic way of marketing, frozen chicken pieces, after unloading at African ports, are subject to long transports without
adequate refrigeration. Defective cold stores and energy cuts
also result in successive phases of defrosting. Despite tropical
temperatures, chicken parts are often sold on markets without
any cooling units at all – a favourable environment for contamination with viruses and bacteria.207
A Senegalese sanitary inspector describes the conditions: “Go
to the markets! You will see women selling these chicken legs
70
exposed to the heat. In the evening, the unsold product is perhaps put into a refrigerator. And the following day, it will again
be exposed to the heat.”208 The Centre Pasteur in Cameroon’s
capital Yaundé analysed samples of frozen poultry meat from
several sales points in the country. Its results were alarming:
83.5 percent of frozen chicken probes did not comply with
micro-biological requirements and were thus unfit for human
consumption. 15 percent were infested with salmonella and 20
percent with campylobacter bacteria causing diarrhoea, vomiting, cramps and fever.209
Regarding the health impacts of frozen poultry meat exports,
European NGO confederation Concord claims that until now
“the EU has refused to take responsibility beyond its borders.
(…) While it keeps raising food safety standards for its own
citizens, it does nothing to prevent EU food exports from posing
a health risk to African citizens in countries with documented
deficiencies in their health control and hygiene standards for
frozen meat chains.”210
206 ��
Guillaume Duteurtre, Pape Nouhine Dièye, Djiby Dia, ‘L’impact des
importations de volailles et de produits laitiers sur la production locale au
Sénégal’, Institute sénégalais de recherces agricoles (ISRA), Etudes et
documents, Vol. 8, No 1, 2005.
208 ��
Denis Horman, ‘Chicken Connection – Le poulet africain étouffé par
l’Europe’, Groupe de Recherche pour une Stratégie économique alternative’
(GRESEA), Octobre 2004, p. 97.
207 ��
2007.
210 ��
Concord, ‘Spotlight on Policy Coherence’, Report 2009, Brussels 2009,
p. 16.
209 ��
Ibid., p. 96.
Import restrictions and loopholes
However, European chicken dumping provoked resistance by
African poultry breeders and farmers prompting some governments to impose import restrictions, for instance, in the cases
of Nigeria, Cameroon, Senegal, and Ivory Coast. Nigeria, the
largest market in West Africa with 140 million inhabitants, adopted an import ban on poultry imports in 2002 that reduced at
least somewhat foreign competition on the domestic market.211
Yet, this move was also due to protect the interests of largescale poultry enterprise Obasanjo Farms Limited owned by
then president Olusegun Obasanjo. The Nigerian president was
later accused of diverting state funds to prop up its own poultry
business.212
In 2004, a succesful campaign coordinated by ACDIC forced
the Cameroonian government to control compliance with its
import quota limiting poultry imports to 5,000 tonnes, but
which had never been enforced before. Importers, for whom
the cheap chicken parts were an extremely profitable business, had bribed customs officials to circumvent the quota and
import up to five times the legally set limit. The government’s
withdrawal of import licences, together with higher duties and
taxes, enabled a regeneration of the domestic poultry sector.213
In Senegal, the import surge gave birth to the creation of the
poultry producers federation FAFA which staged several protests against the liberalisation of the poultry sector.214 Finally, in
2006, the Senegalese government stopped all poultry imports
in response to public pressure and the health risks associated
with the avian influenza epidemic. As a result, imports fell from
providing 22 percent of domestic consumption in 2004 to 1,4
percent in 2007.215
However, other countries in the region like Ghana or Benin
remained open to dumping exports, while another part of EU
213 ��
2007.
211 ��
in West Africa: Nigeria’, Evans School Policy Analysis and Research, EPAR Brief
No. 87, 14 June 2010.
214 ��
Guillaume Duteurtre, Pape Nouhine Dièye, Djiby Dia, ‘L’impact des
importations de volailles et de produits laitiers sur la production locale au
Sénégal’, Institute sénégalais de recherces agricoles (ISRA), Etudes et
documents, Vol. 8, No 1, 2005. FAFA, Plan D’Actions, 2010-2012, Fédération
des Acteurs de la Filière Agricole, Dakar.
212 ��
Sowore Omoyele, Jonathan Elendu, ‘War on Corruption: Is Obasanjo for
Real?’, Elendu Reports, 7 December 2005. Ademola Adegbamigbe, ‘Corruption
in Nigeria under Obasanjo’, eWASH, http://assemblyonline.info/?p=1302
215 ��
in West Africa: Senegal’, Evans School Policy Analysis and Research, EPAR
Brief No. 86, 24 May 2010.
71
chicken exports simply moved further South on the continent
to flood the markets of the Democratic Republic of Congo
and Angola.216 Despite ongoing protests, Ghana’s government
stressed the necessity to uphold imports in order to comply
with international trade rules and to secure the supply of cheap
animal protein for the population.217 At a recent forum in Accra,
poultry farmers regretted the fact that the parliament once
passed a law to increase tariffs on frozen chicken but that
this law was never implemented due to pressures from the
International Monetary Fund (IMF).218 Referring to the import
bans applied in some neighbouring countries, the chairman of
the Ghana National Association of Poultry Farmers (GNAPF),
Kwadwo Asante, wondered why the same policy could not be
applied in Ghana, stressing that it would be “the one solution to
sustain the poultry industry in the country”.219
Benin is by far the largest recipient of EU chicken exports. Of
the 291,000 tonnes of EU poultry parts sold in Africa in 2010,
114,000 tonnes or 39 percent ended up in Benin.220 However,
large parts of Benin’s poultry imports are subsequently reexported to other countries in Sub-Sahara Africa, particularly
to neighbouring Nigeria. Although Nigeria’s import ban is still in
place, traders bribe Nigerian customs officials so that EU chicken
parts can illegally cross the border from Benin. Thus, the import
ban only curtailed the influx of frozen chicken parts, but did
not eliminate it.221 The World Bank estimates that 90 percent of
Benin’s poultry imports are illegally re-exported to Nigeria.222
216 ��
2007.
220 ��
EED, ‘Exportwahn ohne Grenzen’, Press release, 22 March 2011.
217 ��
KG Aning, ‘The Structure and Importance of Commercial and Village
Based Poultry in Ghana’, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United
Nations, Final Review Report, Accra, August 2006.
72
But for Benin’s government, these informal re-exports are an
important source of state revenue. It is estimated that 75 percent of all goods unloaded in the port of Cotonou are destined
for Nigeria and that the customs revenues contribute up to 65
percent to Benin’s budget.223 It is, nevertheless, questionable
221 ��
in West Africa: Nigeria’, Evans School Policy Analysis and Research, EPAR Brief
No. 87, 14 June 2010.
218 ��
Ekow Quandzie, ‘Ghana’s poultry industry in crisis – National Best
Farmer’, Ghana Business News, 3 August 2011.
222 ��
Soamiliy Andriamananjara et al., ‘Assessing the Economic Impacts of an
Economic Partnership Agreement on Nigeria’, The World Bank, Policy Research
Working Paper 4920, April 2009.
219 ��
‘Cheap Imports Damaging Ghana’s Poultry Industry’, ThePoultrySite.com,
2 August 2010.
223 ��
Moussa El-Hadji Mama, ‘Relations Commerciale Benin-Nigeria: Quels
défis avec la mise en vigueur du TEC-CEDEAO?’, Journal Fraternité, 2
whether these receipts compensate for the large damage done
to Benin’s and other West African poultry farmers. As in Senegal, the collapse of many Beninian chicken farms gave birth to
the creation of an association of poultry producers, Association
Nationale des Aviculteurs du Benin (ANAB), which is fighting
for government support and against dumping imports.224
West African poultry farmers also voiced their concerns
regarding the possible impacts of the Economic Partner��
ship Agreements (EPAs) currently being negotiated with the
European Union. Ghana’s poultry farmers, whose government
agreed on an interim EPA in December 2007, fear that the liberalisation commitments will further weaken the already fragile
domestic poultry sector. John Dziwornu, the president of the
Ghana National Farmers and Fishermen Accociation, said that
poultry farmers would be heading for collapse because they
“can not compete with products from the EU”. Similarly, Ken
Quartey of the Poultry Farmers Association of Ghana asserted
that competition would be unfair with the EPAs.225
November 2011. ‘La suspension des réexportations vers le Nigeria’, AFP, 28
October 2004, http://www.izf.net/pages/comm-nigeria/5817/.
224 ��
Syfia International, ‘Enquête – Impact des importations de volailles en
Afrique de l’Ouest’, Brussels, April 2004.
225 ��
Suleiman Mustapha, ‘The dying state of Ghana’s poultry’, The Statesman,
1 February 2008.
At the World Social Forum in Dakar in February 2011, Cameroonian analysts also expressed concerns that the restrictions
on poultry imports imposed by Cameroon’s government might
come under pressure due to the 2007 interim EPA. They fear
the liberalisation commitments could lead to an early phasing
out of these protective measures despite continued vulnerability
of the poultry sector.226 For example, the extended standstill
clause the EU introduced into Cameroon’s EPA could prohibit
Cameroon from using these policy tools in the future, as Concord warns.227 The ‘Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural
Cooperation ACP-EU’ confirms that EPA provisions restricting
the use of trade policy tools like import licences may “narrow
the scope for government action to protect particular national
markets targeted by EU exporters”. This risk would also prevail
“despite the exclusion of poultry meat from tariff elimination
commitments” and its inclusion in lists of sensitive products, as
in the case of Ghana’s and Cameroon’s interim EPAs228.
226 ��
Agritrade, ‘Poultry farmers in Ghana express concerns over imports
and impact of IEPA commitments’, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural
Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), 10 June 2011.
227 ��
Concord, ‘Spotlight on Policy Coherence’, Report 2009, Brussels 2009.
228 ��
Agritrade, ‘EU poultry exports to selected ACP countries booming’,
Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), 25
December 2010.
73
4.5 Feeding factory farms: EU soy imports
An important precondition for the European food industry to
export its products on world markets at competitive prices
is the supply with cheap agricultural raw materials. This is
particularly true for the livestock industry whose vast feedstuff
demand accounts for up to 70 percent of its production costs.
The Common Agricultural Policy supported the growth of the
European livestock industry not only by subsidising cereals
used as animal feed but also with intervention prices, direct
payments, export refunds as well as investment aids that went
into the construction of industrial-scale animal farms (see
chapter).
The Institute for European Environmental Policy finds that
“certain types of CAP payments – particuarly payments per
head of livestock and price support for commodities such as
beef and milk – were key drivers of livestock production patterns and practices, incentivising greater and more intensive
production”. Although recent reforms reduced CAP’s influence
on production decisions, livestock farmers would “continue to
receive substantive amounts of support, mainly as income support, from the public purse”.229 The result is a significant con229 ��
Justin Bartley, Kaley Hart, Vicki Swales, ‘Exploring Policy Options for
More Sustainable Livestock and Feed Production – Final Report for Friends
74
centration process among livestock producers, as consumer
organisation Food & Water Watch points out: “Over the past
two decades, the number of livestock animals has grown, the
number of farms has fallen, and the scale of pig and chicken
farms has exploded.”230
But the vast amounts of cheap feedstuff required for mega
livestock farms nurtured with CAP funds are not only supplied by European cereal farmers but also to a large extent
by imports. As a consequence, the scramble for the cheapest
possible feedstuff supply causes structural adjustment, farm
concentration and land grabbing also in those parts of the
world that provide growing amounts of feed for European
animals, especially in South America.
Today, about 88,000 heads of cattle, 152,000 pigs, 102,000
sheeps and goats,231 390,000 laying hens and over 5 billion
meat chickens232 are being fed each year in the EU-27. Animal
of the Earth’, Institute for European Environmental Policy, March 2009, p. 74.
230 ��
Food & Water Watch, ‘The Perils of the Global Soy Trade – Economic,
Environmental and Social Impacts’, February 2011, p. 10.
231 ��
Européenne des Fabricants d’Aliments Composée, Brussels, p. 64.
232 Compassion in World Farming, Factsheets, ‘Laying Hens’ (April 2010)
and ‘Meat Chickens’ (March 2010), www.cifw.org.uk
feed consists mainly of forage and compound feed. About 30
percent of the feed consumed by farm animals in the EU is produced by the compound feed industry.233 The EU is the world’s
second largest compound feed producer, shortly behind the
US, with an output of 148 million tons in 2009. Due to the
growing production of dairy and meat products, the consumption of animal feed and the turnover of the EU compound feed
industry accelerated sharply in recent years, particularly since
2005 (see chart 10).
Several European firms rank among the world’s top feed
companies, many of which from the Netherlands such as
Nutreco, Provimi, De Heus and Cehave Landbouwbelang (see
table 8). The industry undergoes a consolidation process, with
some of the largest feed companies also trying to expand their
international presence. Nutreco, for instance, recently acquired
production sites in Brasil and Vietnam, AB Agri and Cehave
feed mills in China.234 Provimi already has a large presence
outside Europe, inter alia, in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, South
Africa, China, India and Vietnam.235
233 FEFAC, ‘FEFAC welcomes EU decision on GMO traces’, press release,
22 February 2011.
234 Peter Best, ‘Top feed companies report positive market signals’, in: Feed
International, September/October 2010, pp. 13.
235 www.provimi.com
Table 8
Top European feed companies 2009
Headquarter
Volume
(million tonnes)
Nutreco
Netherlands
8.7
AB Agri
UK
4.7
Glon
France
3.6
DLG
Denmark
3.5
Provimi
Netherlands
3.0
De Heus
Netherlands
3.0
Veronesi
Italy
2.8
InVivo NSA
France
2.7
Agravis Raiffeisen
Germany
2.6
Cehave Landbouwbelang
Netherlands
2.6
Source: Feed International 2010236
236
236 Derived of Feed International’s ranking. See: Peter Best, ‘Top feed
companies report positive market signals’, in: Feed International, September/
October 2010, pp. 12-15.
75
Chart 10 Turnover of the EU compound feed industry
76
The EU animal feed industry, like the whole livestock sector,
strongly depends on imported feedstuffs, particularly proteinrich feed material. Animal feed is by far the largest agricultural
product group imported into the EU. Due to insufficient domestic protein production, three quarters of the EU consumption
of protein-rich feedstuffs currently comes from abroad. 68
percent of the protein material used for animal feed in the EU
consists of soybean meal, of which only 2 percent is produced
in the EU.237 The EU is by far the world’s largest importer of
soymeal and the second largest importer of soybeans after
China. In 2010, it bought 23 million tonnes of soymeal and 13.4
million tonnes of soybeans on the world market. Especially
soymeal imports experienced strong growth in the last years,
increasing from 13 million tonnes in 1997 to 23 million tonnes
today.238
Soybeans and soybean meal are mainly imported from Brazil,
Argentina and the US, where major parts of the crop are
grown in large monocultures of genetically modified organisms
(GMOs). In Brazil, about 60 percent of the soybean fields are
planted with GMOs239, in the US 93 percent240 and in Argentina
almost the whole soybean area.241 Argentina is the main provider of soymeal to the EU with a share of 51 percent of total
imports in 2010, followed by Brazil with 41 percent. Soybeans
originate mainly in Brazil (45 percent), followed by the US and
Paraguay (see charts 11 and 12). Paraguay emerged as an
important supplier in recent years, increasing its soybean shipments to the EU from 0.37 million tonnes in 2002 to 2.3 million
tonnes in 2010.242
The reasons for Europe’s protein deficit and its resulting import
dependency date back to the early 1960s, when the European
Economic Community (EEC) established the Common Agricultural Policy and introduced high tariffs on cereal imports – a
239 ��
CERT ID, ‘Cert ID certified non-GMO soy meal and other soy products :
Volumes available from South America and Worldwide, Porto Alegre, 1 July
2010. However, figures on the GMO share of the soybean area are differing.
Particularly industry sources tend to announce higher shares. For a higher
estimate see, e.g.: Alexandre Inacio, ‘Transgênicos ocupam área recorde’, Valor
Econômico, 17.1.2011.
240 USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service, ‘Acreage’, 30 June 2010.
237 ��
Européenne des Fabricants d’Aliments Composée, Brussels, p. 53-54.
241 ��
Grain, ‘Las consecuencias inevitables de un modelo genocida y ecocida
– Trece años de de soja en Argentina’, in: Biodiversidad – Sustento y Culturas,
Number 61, July 2009, pp. 23-26.
238 ��
Product Board MVO, ‘Fact sheet Soy’, Product Board for Margarine, Fats
and Oils, August 2011.
242 ��
77
Chart 11 Origins of soybean meal (23.0 million tonnes)
78
Chart 12 Origins of soybeans (13.4 million tonnes)
decision that affected the export opportunities of third countries. The United States in particular tried to ensure guaranteed
access for its existing agricultural exports to the EEC in the
framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT). Finally, during the Dillon Round of GATT (1960-61), the
EEC made one momentous concession and granted the binding
of a zero tariff on soybeans, protein meals and other oilseeds
as well as zero or very low tariffs on further feedstuffs. In
the following years, the European Commission was unable to
modify these bound tariffs during successive trade rounds. As a
result, EU feed manufacturers increasingly replaced European
cereals and protein crops by cheap imports of soybeans and
other feedstuffs mainly from the United States and later from
South American countries.243
Similarly, the 1992 Blair House Agreement, a deal between
the US and the EU to break the impasse of the GATT Uruguay
Round negotiations, contained a provision limiting the EU
area planted with oilseeds (mainly rapeseed, sunflowers and
soybeans) in order to protect the interests of US soy exporters.
The BSE scandal also contributed to growing feedstuff imports.
243 Ken A. Ingersent, ‘Agriculture in the Uruguay Round: A European
Perspective’, University of Minnesota, Department of Agricultural and Applied
Economics, Staff Paper P90-2, January 1990. CTA, ‘Oilseed’, Agritrade,
Executive brief, December 2008.
In 2001, the European Union banned the use of animal and
bone meal in livestock feed triggering a profound change in the
composition of compound feed and growing imports of vegetable alternatives to protein-rich animal meal, mainly soy.
Given the large import dependency, the food industry and the
European Commission try to abolish any obstacles which might
potentially affect soybean supply. Since a large part of the soy
imported in the EU is already genetically modified, industry
groupings like the European Feed Manufacturers’ Federation
FEFAC push for liberalisations of the already weak EU GMO
legislation to secure cheap feedstuff supplies. Together with
lobby groups of the biotech and food processing industry,
FEFAC has been pressuring the European Commission,
parlamentarians and EU member states to scrap the so-called
‘zero-tolerance policy’ regarding traces of unapproved genetically modified varieties in EU feed imports.244
While the European Commission has already authorised a
series of GM varieties used for animal feed, until now, it does
not allow feedstuff imports containing even very small amounts
of genetically modified material which has not been authorised
in the EU. In summer 2009, about 200,000 tons of US soy
244 Corporate Europe Observatory, ‘Animal feed industry attempts to break
down EU zero tolerance GM policy’, January 2011.
79
shipments to the EU were blocked in European ports because
they contained small traces of genetically modified maize varieties that had not yet been approved in the EU.245 The feed and
food industry used these blockages to spread largely unfounded
claims that the zero-tolerance policy would disrupt necessary
supplies and cause sharp rises in feed prices undermining the
competitiveness of the feed and livestock sectors. Referring to
“hungry animals” which would “say yes” to GMOs, EuropaBio,
the umbrella of the EU biotech industry, even warned that “livestock production will be forced to relocate outside of the EU”.246
But cases of contamination with unapproved GMOs are in fact
extremely rare and since mid-September 2009 no further feed
shipments had been blocked.247
Nonetheless, the European Commission bowed to industry
pressure and, in February 2011, abolished its zero-tolerance
policy and approved a proposal establishing a tolerance threshold. According to this proposal, future feed shipments may
contain up to 0.1 percent genetically modified varieties that have
245 Michael Hogan, ‘GMO approvals won’t unblock EU soybean importstrade’, Reuters, 2 November 2009.
80
not yet undergone safety testing in Europe. Member states and
the European Parliament still have to agree to the Commission
proposal.248 This decision clearly marks a victory for the feed
and food industry, which might now use its success to push for
similar regulations easing the use of GMOs in food products for
human consumption.
The European Commission also attacks trade policy measures
of producer countries which might affect the provision or
prices of soybeans. Its recent report on ‘Trade and Investment
Barriers’ claims that “Brazil and Argentina are also hampering trade through different measures restricting the export of
raw materials.” Regarding agricultural commodities, “for some
products such as soya beans, export taxes in Argentina are
as high as 35%”. Together with “burdensome export procedures”, these measures would have “a considerable negative
effect on European downstream producers and, ultimately,
consumers”.249 Argentina’s differential export tax, which is an
important source of government revenue, taxes unprocessed
soybeans higher than processed products like soybean meal
or oil. Abolishing this tax is one of the Commission’s aims for
246 ��
EuropaBio, ‘Farm Animals say yes to Low Level Presence of GM’, Green
Biotech Fact Sheet, Brussels 2008.
248 ‘EU experts approve trace GM in feed imports: Official’, EurActiv.com,
23 February 2011.
247 Greenpeace, ‘EU allows untested GM crops into the food chain’, Press
release, 22 February 2011.
249 ��
European Commission, ‘Trade and Investment Barriers – Report 2011’,
2011, COM(2011) 114, p. 8.
the negotiations on an Association Agreement between the
EU and Mercosur (comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and
Uruguay) that were relaunched in May 2010.250
The EU as a land grabber
In terms of land use abroad, the EU imports of more than 40
million tonnes of crop proteins, mainly soybeans, represents an
area of approximately 20 million hectares.251 The largest areas
occupied for European soy consumption are located in Brazil
and Argentina, where about 80 percent of EU soybean and
soy meal imports originate, although neighbouring countries
Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay also play increasingly important
roles as suppliers.
The area planted with soybeans in South America is continuously growing. The combined soybean area of Brazil, Argentina,
Paraguay and Bolivia grew two-and-half times between 1988
and 2008, from 17 million hectares to 42 million hectares (see
chart 13).252 For the upcoming planting season 2011/2012, it is
estimated that Brazil will increase its soybean fields to 25 million hectares, and Argentina to over 19 million hectares.253 The
combined soybean area of both countries is almost as large as
the area of Sweden (45 million hectares). But the expansion of
soybean plantations in South America comes at a huge social
and ecological price. Land is concentrated in the hands of a few
investors and farm operators, small farmers and indigenous
peoples are pushed from their lands, the pesticide-intensive
cultivation of genetically modified soy endangers soils, water
and human health, while the agricultural frontier further expands into natural habitats, savannahs and forests.254
The soy monocultures are one of the most striking examples of
a production model that has been described as “farming without farmers”. Millions of rural families have been expelled from
their lands to give way to the oilseed crop, but only a minority
of them can find employment on the plantations. Although
soya fields in Brazil occupied 44 percent of the arable area in
252 ��
WWF, ‘Soya and the Cerrado: Brazil’s forgotten jewel’, 2011.
250 ��
251 ��
European Parliament, Report, ‘The EU protein deficit: what solution for
a long-standing problem?’, Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development,
Rapporteur: Martin Häusling, A7-0026/2011, 4.2.2011.
253 ��
‘La region tendrá una mayor área sembrada con soja’, Panorama
Agropecuario, http://www.sudesteagropecuario.com.ar/2011/06/23/la-regiontendra-una-mayor-area-sembrada-con-soja/
254 ��
Food & Water Watch, ‘The Perils of the Global Soy Trade – Economic,
Environmental and Social Impacts’, February 2011.
81
Chart 13 Planted area of soya, S. America (hectares),
1961-2008
2005, they only provided 5.5 percent of the jobs in agricultural
primary production. Irrespective of the ongoing territorial
expansion of the crop, employment in this sector has continues
fallen. In 1985, 1.7 million Brazilian rural workers produced 18
million tonnes of soy. Yet, in 2004, only 335,000 workers were
needed to harvest almost 50 million tonnes of the crop.255
In Argentina, the highly mechanised soy production model only
needs 2 workers per 1,000 hectares per year, thus causing
unemployment and poverty in rural areas. The diversity of
food production also impeds local people’s access to a varied
and nutritious diet. In the five years prior to 2005, soy fields
displaced 4.6 million hectares of land which had previously
been used for the production of dairy, fruits, vegetables and
grains as well as cattle breeding. While the output of potatoes,
beans, peas, lentils, milk and eggs continuously fell, the number
of people lacking access to the basic nutrition basket – the
governments measure of poverty – was on the rise.256
Source: FAOSTAT
255 ��
Sergio Schlesinger, O grão que resceu demais – A soja e seus impactos
sobre a sociedade e o meio ambiente, FASE, Rio de Janeiro, May 2006, pp.
35-37.
256 ��
Michael Antoniou et al., ‘GM Soy: Responsible? Sustainable?’, GLS Bank,
ARGE Gentechnik-frei, September 2010.
82
Soy expansion accelerates land concentration and causes
many, often violent conflicts. In Paraguay, where 2,6 percent
of the population owns 85 percent of the land, soy is now by
far the most important crop cultivated on more than 2.5 million
hectares. In parallel with the expansion of the soya frontier,
the largest farms managed to increase land ownerhip even
more. According to the government’s latest agricultural census,
between 1991 and 2008, the area planted with soy increased
almost five-fold and the number of big soy farms with more
than 1,000 hectares rose from 26 to 482, together owning 1.1
million hectares now. In contrast, the large majority of small
soy farms with less than 20 hectares – estimated at some
18,000 – is confined to only 98,000 hectares.257
Due to the lack of secure land titles, Paraguay’s small farmers
and indigenous peoples such as Guaraní, Toba or Ayoreo can
easily be pushed of the land they have been cultivating for
generations. Those who are unwilling to leave their land, will be
forced by massive sprayings of agrochemicals or brutal repression. Many desperate peasants try to resist growing landlessness by organising protests, road blockades and occupations to
reclaim the land they lost to the new plantation owners, many
257 ��
Dirección de Censos y Estadísticas Agrarias, ‘Censo Agropecuario
Nacional 2008 – Resultados Preliminares’, Presentation, Ministerio de
Agricultura y Ganadería, 2009.
of which Brazilians attracted by the comparatively low land
prices in Paraguay. Conflicts frequently escalate during land
occupations when police forces intervene to evict peasants
and destroy their settlements. Farmers complain that, during
evictions, police agents mistreat the landless, burn their shacks
and tents, steal possessions and kill animals.258 Many peasants
also suffer from intimidations and assaults of big landowners’
private security forces. Florencio Martínez, peasant leader in
the district of Capiivary, tells that he has been kidnapped and
tortured in 2004 and 2008 by order of a landowner owning
large haciendas in the region: “Many of us were captured and
others killed. This demobilises our basis.”259
Soybean plantations are one of the driving forces of deforestation, either by directly occupying land once covered with forests
or by displacing grasslands previously used for cattle grazing,
which pushes cattle farmers to clear more forests elsewhere.
These indirect land-use changes caused by the soya boom
are one of the main culprits of the ongoing forest losses in
the Amazon and in the South American savannahs like the
258 ��
Stella Semino, Lilian Joensen, Javiera Rulli, ‘Paraguay Sojero – Soy
Expansion and its Violent Attack on Local and Indigenous Communities in
Paraguay’, Grupo de Reflexión Rural, March 2006.
259 ��
BASE Investigaciones Sociales, Repórter Brasil, ‘Los impactos
socioambientales de la soja en Paraguay’, Asunción, August 2010, p. 35.
83
Brazilian Cerrado or the Chaco region in Northern Argentina,
Paraguay and Bolivia. Much of the land used for soybeans in
Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil comes from the clearance of
at least 64 million hectares of natural forests in the last two
decades. According to the rather conservative estimates of the
FAO, between 1990 and 2010, Brazil lost 55.3 million hectares
of forests, Argentina 5.2 million and Paraguay 3.6 million.260
When forests and grasslands are cleared to establish soybean
fields, CO2 is released into the atmosphere, thus directly contributing to climate change. Deforestation is responsible for at
least 12 percent of global CO2 emissions.261
The woods falling prey to soya expansion, are also important
sources of livelihoods for indigenous communities and other
forest dwellers. The Toba and Wichí, e.g., living in the dry forests of the Chaco region bordering North Argentina, Paraguay
and Bolivia, suffer from the ongoing clearing of quebracho and
algarrobo trees to make way for soy plantations. The forest
destruction led to a loss of plant proteins in the diet of these
peoples, as Rolando Nuñez, coordinator of the human rights
260 ��
FAO, Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010, Main Report, FAO
Forestry Paper 163, Annex 3, Global Tables, Table 3, Rome 2010.
261 ��
Corinne Le Quéré, Michael Raupach, Josep G. Canadell, Gregg Marland
et al, ‘Trends in the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide’ In: Nature Geoscience,
Vol. 2, No. 12, 2009, pp. 831-836.
84
organisation Centro Mandela in Argentina’s Chaco province,
points out: “The algarrobo symbolises almost everything because the indigenous peoples obtained most of their proteins
from its fruit.”262
The widespread undernutrition triggered by the dwindling possibilities for gathering and hunting led to infectious diseases
like tuberculosis and the cargas disease. At least 22 Tobas died
of malnutrition in 2007 and 10 Wichí children in the beginning
of 2011. According to Nuñez, more than 15,000 indigenous
people currently suffer from malnutrition only in the Chaco
province.263 Referring to the soya plantation surrounding his
village, Marcelino Pérez, a leader of a Wichí community in Salta
province, complains: “We have children dying from hunger,
and right next to here is all this food. I ask myself: Where is it
going?” 264
262 ��
Hernan Scandizzo, ‘Argentina: Chaco – land clearance, undernutrition
and death’, Word Rainforest Movement, Bulletin, Issue 123, October 2007.
263 ��
‘Muerte de 6 niños indígenas reaviva el flagelo de la desnutrición en el
norte argentino‘, EFE, 8 February 2011.
264 ��
‘Una mirada al corazón del hambre argentina’, BBC Mundo, 26 April
2011.
A toxic production model
Besides losing their livelihoods, smallholders are also exposed
to severe health risks due to the toxic nature of the production
model. Soya cultivation in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay is
dominated by the genetically modified “Roundup Ready” variety
developed by US seed multinational Monsanto. The crop is
resistant to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup based on the highly
toxic chemical glyphosate. The crop’s genetic modification
allows soy fields to be sprayed with glyphosate, killing weeds
and other plants except the soy crop itself. After Monsanto’s US
patent on the glyphosate molecule expired in the year 2000,
other agrochemical companies also produced this herbicide.
The main agronomic problem caused by GM soy is the spread
of glyphosate-resistant weeds – also called superweeds –
caused by the overuse of herbicides like Roundup.265
In Argentina, for instance, glyphosate use increased from 1
million liters in 1991 to 180 million litres in 2007.266 Nowadays,
200 million litres of glyphosate-based herbicides are used in
the country to produce 50 million tonnes of soybeans. Over
time, at least 21 glyphosate-resistant weeds have been identified worldwide.267 Because of their spread, farmers are forced
to apply more and more herbicides, some of which even more
toxic than glyphosate like Dicamba, 2,4-D or paraquat produced
by Swiss company Syngenta.
The industry answer to the spread of those superweeds is the
application of even more chemicals. Agrochemical companies,
amongst them several European ones like Syngenta, Bayer
CropScience and BASF, are now developing further soya varieties resistant to their own toxic herbicides. German company
Bayer CropScience, e.g., has patented a GM soy variety, the
LibertyLink soy or LL soy, tolerant to its own herbicide Liberty,
which contains the chemical agent glufosinate ammonium. The
LibertyLink soy is conceived as an alternative for soy farmers
who had difficulties controlling the spread of glyphosateresistant weeds.268
265 ��
Charles M. Benbrook, ‘Rust, Resistance, Run Down Soils, and Rising
Costs – Problems Facing Soybean Producers in Argentina’, Ag BioTech InfoNet,
Technical Paper Number 8, January 2005.
The chemical treadmill farmers are forced onto by the GM soy
model dramatically increases the use of all kinds of agrochemi-
266 ��
Rosa Binimelis, Walter Pengue, Iliana Monterroso, ‘“Transgenic treadmill”:
Responses to the emergence and spread of glyhosate-resistant johnsongrass in
Argentine’, in: Geoforum (2009), doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.03.009
267 ��
http://www.weedscience.org/summary/MOASummary.asp
268 ��
ARGE Gentechnik-frei, September 2010.
85
cals. The growth of the South American markets for herbicides,
insecticides and fungicides channels large profits into the
pockets of agrochemical companies like Syngenta, Bayer and
BASF supplying these markets. Agronomist Walter Pengue
emphasizes that this model is also “boosting the dependence
on imported inputs”. In Argentina, e.g., local production of
pesticides is only 17 percent, whereas 43 percent is imported
and the other 40 percent produced locally with imported basic
chemicals.269
The herbicides sprayed from airplanes or large tractors drift
onto human settlements and severely affect the health of
people living in the neighbourhood of soy plantations. Recent
research by scientist Andrés Carrasco confirmed that pregnant
women who were exposed to herbicide-spraying became children with malformations or suffered from spontaneous abortions. An epidemiological study in Paraguay found that “women
who were exposed during pregnancy to herbicides delivered
offspring with birth defects, particularly microcephaly (small
head), anencephaly (absence of part of the brain and head),
and malformations of the skull”.270 According to a report of the
269 ��
Walter A. Pengue, ‘Transgenic Crops in Argentina: The Ecological and
Social Debt’, in: Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 25, No. 4,
August 2005, pp. 314-322.
270 ��
86
government of the Argentinean Chaco province, the cancer rate
among children tripled and birth defects nearly quadrupled in
areas frequently affected by sprayings of glyphosate and other
herbicides.271
By subsidising European mega livestock farms consuming
large amounts of imported soy as animal feed, the Common
Agricultural Policy contributes to the expansion of the disastrous production model of soy monocultures in South America.
However, more and more social movements are urging the EU
to redirect its support from industrial livestock farms to smaller
and more sustainable livestock holdings respecting animal
welfare and less dependent on imported feed.272
Progressive farmers also demand that a reduction of European
livestock production should be complemented by a shift from
imported soy to domestic protein crops. The EU’s protein
deficit could easily be reduced by promoting local protein-rich
legumes like field beans, peas or lupins, whose breeding and
cultivation substantially declined in the last decades due to
ARGE Gentechnik-frei, September 2010, p. 7.
271 ��
Ibid., p. 8.
272 ��
Friends of the Earth, ‘What’s feeding our food? – The environmental and
social impacts of the livestock sector’, December 2008.
cheap soy imports.273 “European farmers can grow the protein
plants that Europe needs,” confirms Gérard Choplin from the
European Coordination of the international peasant movement
La Via Campesina. He underlines further advantages of such
a strategy: “Rotating these protein crops and maintaining
permant pastures should be required in all places where it
is feasible. This will benefit soil fertility and biodiversity and
reduce carbon emissions by storing it in the soil.”274
unhindered supply of soya to the EU market by providing a
technical solution regarding the low-level presence of GMOs in
protein crops for food and feed imported into the EU”.276 This
somewhat contradictary resolution demonstrates the necessity
to uphold political pressure on EU institutions to adopt more
coherent agricultural policies which would ease the CAP’s
burden on rural communities in the Global South.
In March 2011, the European Parliament adopted a resolution
demanding a series of measures to reduce the EU’s protein
deficit, referring, in particular, to the upcoming CAP reform.275
The parlamentarians call on the European Commission to
ensure “that its legislative proposals for CAP reform include
adequate and reliable new measures and instruments which
support farmers in improving crop rotation systems so as
to substantially reduce the current protein deficit and price
volatility”. However, reflecting the strong influence of the food
industry, the resolution also calls on the Commission “to ensure
273 ��
Friends of the Earth Europe, ‘Less soy, more legumes – how Europe
can feed its animals without destroying the planet’, Brussels, December 2010.
274 ��
Food & Water Watch, Press release, 7 February 2011, http://www.
foodandwaterwatch.org/pressreleases/soya-dangerous-industrial-soya-trade/
276 ��
European Parliament, Report, ‘The EU protein deficit: what solution for
a long-standing problem?’, Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development,
Rapporteur: Martin Häusling, A7-0026/2011, 4.2.2011, pp. 8-9.
275 ��
http://www.euractiv.com/en/cap/meps-want-protein-deficit-eulivestock-news-502925
87
5 Recommendations
Despite of three decades of reforms, the Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP) and its unequal distribution of funds continues
to favour a minority of highly rationalised factory farms and
export-oriented food processors, whereas the large majority of
family farms faces a constant squeeze on producer prices forcing them out of the market. An important reason for this flawed
policy is the dominant objective of nurturing the international
competitiveness of the European food industry by providing
processors and retailers with cheap agricultural raw materials.
Yet, this scramble for the cheapest possible supplies destroys
the livelihoods of millions of farmers around the world and it
fosters an unsustainable production model based on monocultures and chemical pesticides.
The dogma of international competitiveness shapes the highly
unfair trade relations the European Union maintains with the
rest of the world. As an importer of agricultural commodities,
the EU’s quest for the cheapest raw materials and feedstuffs
fosters the expansion of the agricultural frontier, the grabbing
of smallholders’ lands and the clearing of forests and pastures.
Regarding the EU’s role as an exporter, the cheap supplies
88
extracted from farmers around the globe enable the European
food industry to flood foreign markets and to displace millions
of local farmers and food producers. The European trade
policy and the bilateral free trade agreements complement the
Common Agricultural Policy by securing the global sourcing of
raw materials and by opening up foreign markets for European
exporters. By doing so, the European agricultural policy still
contributes to poverty, hunger and environmental destruction,
irrespective of the numerous CAP reforms undertaken since its
inception.
Ongoing EU dumping exports undermine efforts to limit import
dependency in food insecure countries. The CAP, together with
neoliberal trade policies, deepens import dependency in the
South to secure export markets for the European food industry.
The EU’s overarching aim of supporting global players in the
food export business implies the consolidation and prolongation
of import dependency elsewhere. Given the rising and more
volatile global food prices, the CAP’s export strategy not only
accepts but actively promotes the vulnerability of food importers against price spikes and recurrent food crises. Similarly,
the EU’s objective to provide its global players with cheap
inputs condemns raw material and feedstuff suppliers in the
South to convert ever more forests, pastures and small farms
into large-scale cash crop plantations. Consequently, the global
competitiveness of the EU food business also takes the loss
of livelihoods of smallholders in input providing countries for
granted.
Therefore, for the EU to effectively contribute to the eradication of poverty and malnutrition, a profound shift in the CAP’s
main orientation would be required. The dominant objective of
achieving international competitiveness of the EU food industry
would have to be replaced with a strong commitment to the
realisation of food sovereignty at home and abroad. Food sovereignty, as defined by the international peasant movement Via
Campesina, refers to the right of peoples, countries, farmers
and consumers to define their agricultural policy and the way
food is produced and consumed, without harming third countries or the environment. It favours local production over global
trade and defends all countries’ right to protect themselves
against excessively cheap imports. The concept was born at
the World Food Summit in 1996 and subsequently influenced
the international agricultural debate, even within United Nations
bodies.277
Box 6
“Export dumping must cease”
Via Campesina: Food Sovereignty and Trade
“Food is first and foremost a source of nutrition and only
secondarily an item of trade. National agricultural policies
must priorise production for domestic consumption and
food self-sufficiency. Food imports must not displace local
production nor depress prices. This means that export
dumping or subsidised export must cease. Peasant farmers
have the right to produce essential food staples for their
countries and to control the marketing of their products.”278
The upcoming CAP reform offers the opportunity to change
course and create an agricultural policy that contributes to the
global fight against poverty and hunger and supports small
farmers’ struggle to protect domestic
��
agriculture and “decolonise” their food. For seizing this opportunity, the CAP would
have to implement the following key changes:279
278 ��
Via Campesina, ‘The Right to Produce and Access to Land – Food
Sovereignty: A Future without Hunger’, 11-17 November 1996, Rome.
277 http://www.viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_
content&view=article&id=47:food-sovereignty&catid=21:food-sovereignty-andtrade&Itemid=38.
279 ��
On the following see also: Olivier De Schutter, ‘The Common Agricultural
Policy towards 2020: The role of the European Union in supporting the realisation
of the right to food’, Comments and Recommendations by the United Nations
89
Preventing surpluses
The future CAP has to stop stimulating surpluses which are
still being produced in the case of grains, meat and dairy
products. Besides stringent production standards like the
avoidance of overfertilisation and the reduction of animal
rearing, it would be necessary to implement a flexible supply
management which adjusts the volumes produced with the
domestic demand, as it has been proposed for the milk market
by the European Milk Board and other progressive farmers
groups. Regulating supply is indispensable in order to avoid
overproduction and the squeeze on producer prices.
Reducing dependency on feedstuff imports
To reduce the large amounts of feedstuff imports for the
livestock industry, particularly protein-rich crops like soya,
it is necessary for the future CAP to support the cultivation
of domestic protein plants like peas, beans or lupines, which
would also contribute to more diversified crop-ration on the
fields and reduced carbon dioxide emissions. The EU should
also stick to its zero-tolerance policy for the imports of
Special Rapporteur on the right to food, 17 June 2011. Tobias Reichert, ‘Who
feeds the world? The impacts of the European agricultural policy on hunger in
developing countries’, Misereor, Aachen, January 2011. APRODEV CAP Lobby
Briefs, February 2011, http://www.aprodev.eu/index.php?option=com_content
&view=article&id=65&Itemid=35&lang=en
90
genetically-modified feedstuffs like soy or maize. Additionally,
investment aids for the modernisation and expansion of
industrial animal farms would have to be stopped. Instead,
reduced consumption of animal products like meat, milk or
cheese should be promoted.
Ending dumping exports
Export subsidies have to be abolished, independently of
the outcome of the “Doha Round” negotiations in the WTO.
Export refunds must not be replaced by any other hidden
forms of export subsidisation like trade promotion or
investment aids in the export-oriented livestock industry.
Since direct payments continue to cross-subsidise factory
farms and food exports, they must be reoriented to supplying
the domestic market with high quality food and be coupled
to the strict fulfillment of public goods like environmental
protection, animal welfare as well as the preservation of the
landscape and rural employment.
Allowing protection against import surges
Given the disastrous impacts of import surges in the Global
South, the CAP should introduce a provision requiring the
EU to respect developing countries’ measures to protect
their domestic markets against food imports. The EU’s
bilateral free trade accords, such as Association Agreements
or Economic Partnership Agreements, have to permit the
flexible adjustment of tariffs to avoid disruptions of domestic
food markets and the displacement of local farmers and
food processors. EU trade negotiators must also refrain
from any pressure aimed at preventing developing countries
from exempting sensitive products from liberalisation
commitments.
Policy. Supporting these countries’ transition towards higher
food self-sufficiency is an international obligation, as the UN
Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food reminds: “The EU has
a responsibility to facilitate such a transition.”280
Establishing a complaints mechanism
As part of the new CAP, the EU should establish a
complaints mechanism allowing developing countries’
governments and civil society affected by EU agricultural
policies or food companies to file charges in cases of food
dumping, land grabbing or human rights violations. This
mechanism could take the form of an ombudsman who
receives and investigates complaints brought against EU
policies and companies and initiates conflict resolution
processes as well as the search for solutions and redress.
Supporting food self-sufficiency
The future CAP should not only pursue food self-sufficiency
in the EU but also in countries outside Europe. Support for
domestic agriculture, reduced import dependency and higher
self-sufficiency in food insecure countries should be established as a central objective of the new Common Agricultural
280 ��
On the following see also: Olivier De Schutter, ‘The Common Agricultural
Policy towards 2020: The role of the European Union in supporting the
realisation of the right to food’, Comments and Recommendations by the United
Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, 17 June 2011, p. 3.
91
Transnational Institute. Founded in 1974, TNI is an international network of activist scholars committed to critical
analyses of the global problems of today and tomorrow. It aims to provide intellectual support to grassroots
movements concerned to steer the world in a democratic, equitable and environmentally sustainable direction.
In the spirit of public scholarship, and aligned to no political party, TNI seeks to create and promote international
co-operation in analysing and finding possible solutions to such global problems as militarism and conflict, poverty
and marginalisation, social injustice and environmental degradation.
www.tni.org
The Center for Research and Documentation Chile-Latin America (FDCL e.V.) exists since 1974 and is a center
for information and communication for individuals and groups that wish to inform themselves or get involved with
Latin America- -related issues. Diverse projects, political initiatives, country committees, migrant groups and Latin
America-related media projects work under the umbrella of FDCL. Since the founding of the association in 1974
our archive continously and critically contributes to the documentation of social, economic and political developments
in Latin America and of its relationships with the countries of the global “North”.
http://fdcl-berlin.de/en/wir
Ecologistas en Acción. Confederation of more than 300 environmental groups around Spain, Ecologists in Action
defends the ideas of social ecology, who understands that environmental problems are caused by a model of
production and consumption increasingly globalized. This development model also creates other social problems.
Therefore, from the social ecology seeks to transform the collective imaginary to avoid the ecological crisis.
www.ecologistasenaccion.org
Védegylet Egyesület - Protect the Future. Grounded on the principles of participation, self-organisation, solidarity,
the acceptance of ecological constraints and the goal of social justice, eco-politics is making a difference where
traditional civil activity and party politics has not. From sustainable farming to protecting public goods and services,
from research to policy alternatives, from protest to lobbying, we are determined to create a democracy where the
widest participation is valued and environmentaland social sustainability are good principles.
www.vedegylet.hu
This publication is published within the framework of
the EU funded project Just Trade (www.just-trade.org).
The project advocates for greater policy coherence between
EU development and trade policy, with a view to promote
equitable and sustainable development.
Partners in the project are: Ecologistas en Acción (Spain),
FDCL (Germany), Glopolis (Czech Republic), Protect the Future
(Hungary) and Transnational Institute (Netherlands).
The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of
the publishing organisation(s).
october 2011

Food Security and the EU`s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP

Transcription

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